Speaker Bios 2012-2015 (Subject to Change)

General Wesley K. Clark, (ret.) rose to the rank of four-star general as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in 38 years of service in the United States Army. Since retiring from the military in 2000, he has become an investment banker, businessman, commentator, author and teacher. In September 2003, he answered the call to stand as a Democratic candidate for President of the United States, where his campaign won the state of Oklahoma and launched him to national prominence before he returned to the private sector in February 2004. General Clark has chaired several public and private companies, and is a progressive leader in pursuing energy solutions.

General Clark graduated first in his class at West Point and completed degrees in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University (B.A. and M.A.) as a Rhodes Scholar. While serving in Vietnam, he commanded an infantry company in combat, where he was severely wounded and evacuated home on a stretcher. He commanded at the battalion, brigade and division level, and served in a number of significant staff positions, including service as the Director Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5). General Clark finished his career as NATO commander and Supreme Allied Commander Europe where he led NATO forces to victory in Operation Allied Force, saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing.

His awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Defense Distinguished Service Medal (five awards), silver star, bronze star, purple heart, honorary knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments, and numerous other awards from other governments, including award of Commander of the Legion of Honor (France).

The author of three books, “Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat,” “Winning Modern War: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire” and “A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor, Country,” Clark also serves as Chairman/CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic consulting firm, and Co-Chairman of Growth Energy.

General Clark joined UCLA as a senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations in UCLA’s International Institute in 2006, where he teaches seminars, publishes through the Burkle Center, and hosts an annual conference of government, corporate and opinion leaders from around the world on national security. He currently serves in leadership positions with a number of non-profit public service organizations, including City Year Little Rock/North Little Rock (Board Chair), the International Crisis Group (Board Member), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Distinguished Senior Advisor), the Center for American Progress (Trustee), the United States Institute of Peace (United Nations Task Force Member), VoteVets (Board of Advisors), and the General Accountability Office (Advisory Board Member). He also serves as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative’s Energy & Climate Change Advisory Board and ACORE’s Advisory Board.

General Clark founded Wesley K. Clark & Associates in 2004, which uses his expertise, relationships, and extensive international reputation and experience in the fields of energy, alternative energy, corporate and national security, logistics, aerospace and defense, and investment banking. He applies his experience and skills in strategic leadership, high technology, training and organizational development to the challenges facing the corporate world – offering a singularly informed and dynamic view of leadership based on honor, conviction and action.

Mr. Robert D. "Bob" Hormats is Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates.Immediately prior he served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (at the time, entitled Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs) from 2009 to 2013. Mr. Hormats was formerly Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), which he joined in 1982. He served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary, from 1977 to 1979, and Assistant Secretary of State, from 1981 to 1982, at the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (formerly Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs).

Mr. Hormats was Ambassador and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981. He served as a senior staff member for International Economic Affairs on the United States National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was senior economic adviser to Henry Kissinger, General Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. He helped to manage the Nixon administration's opening of diplomatic relations with China's communist government. He was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in 1982 and the Arthur S. Flemming Award in 1974.

Mr. Hormats has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and served on the Board of Visitors of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Dean’s Council of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Mr. Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. Mr. Schell was born in New York City and graduated from Harvard University Magna Cum Laude in Far Eastern History studying under Professors Benjamin Schwartz and John King Fairbank. He then studied Chinese language at Stanford University, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University and finally received his MA and Ph.d (abd) from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s.

While best known as one of the country's most well informed and thoughtful observers on China, Mr. Schell has also been a ship-hand, a war correspondent in Indochina, a rancher, and a contributor on China for PBS, NBC, and CBS, where a 60 Minutes program of his won an Emmy. He has also served as a correspondent for several PBS/Frontline documentaries on China and Tibet and covered the war in Iraq for The New York Review of Books.

Mr. Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. He has written widely for many magazine and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Time, The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, the China Quarterly, and the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

Mr. Schell served for many years as Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. He remains on the UC Berkeley faculty as Professor Emeritus. As Director of the Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations in New York City, he leads new programs on the environment, as well as the media and foreign policy in an effort promote more constructive dialogue between key Chinese and American leaders. He has also served on the boards of the Climate Policy Institute, Current TV and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His lecture topics include: "Why There is No Solution to Climate Change Without China"; "Meltdown: Melting Glaciers in The Himalayas: Threat To Asia's Rivers"; and "Does China's Economic Development Threaten The US?"

Mr. Schell has been honored with fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Freedom Forum at Columbia University. He has also received numerous honors, including the Overseas Press Club of America Award, a Page One Award, and, most recently, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford and Harvard Universities for the best coverage of Asia.

Mr. Schell, who has an active interest in photography, has also written the opening essays for such books as Jack Birns' Assignment Shanghai, James Whitlow Delano's Empire: Impressions from China, and Sebastiao Salgado's Sahel: The End of The Road. He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Among other projects, he is now heading up the Initiative on U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate at The Asia Society.

Dr. Sharri Clark is a Foreign Affairs officer in the Bureau of Counterterrorism. Her portfolio includes international critical infrastructure protection, cyber security with a particular emphasis on countering terrorist use of the Internet, and countering violent extremism. Dr. Clark is a former American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow and Associate of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University (2008-2010).

Before assuming her position at the Department of State, Dr. Clark was a Harvard University Administrative Fellow and an assistant curator and computer consultant at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. She has also consulted for UNESCO on cultural heritage preservation programs in the North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkwa) in Pakistan and for archaeological projects and museum collections computerization/digitization projects in Pakistan. Prior to her graduate study at Harvard, Dr. Clark worked as a computer systems specialist and project manager developing business computer applications/database systems for Computer Sciences Corporation, General Dynamics, and Texas Instruments.

Dr. Clark holds A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology (specializing in archaeology) from Harvard University, where her research involved extensive fieldwork in Pakistan, India, and Israel. She also holds a B.S. degree in computer science and sociology from Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Born in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, she is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and is very proud of her Cherokee and Choctaw heritage.

Dr. Fred Moavenzadeh served as the President of Masdar Institute of Science and Technology from July 1, 2010 to July 31st, 2015. During his time as President of Masdar Institute he supported the Institute's mandate of transforming the emirate into a leading source of advanced technologies and highly skilled human capital.

Developed with the support and collaboration of MIT, the Masdar Institute is a not-for-profit, private, postgraduate research and education institute dedicated to clean energy, water and environmental, and sustainable technologies.

Masdar Institute stems from the vision and commitment of Abu Dhabi's leadership to establish a sustainable knowledge-based economy. The institute’s academic and research programs are aligned with the Masdar Initiative, a multi-faceted initiative of the Abu Dhabi Government aimed at the development, deployment and commercialization of advanced energy solutions.

Widely recognized for his innovative role in building global institutions and developing new models of teaching and research through international initiatives in education, science and technology, Dr. Moavenzadeh has a long and distinguished career at MIT. He has served as the director of the Technology and Development Program, and the Center for Technology Policy and Industrial Development.

Dr. Moavenzadeh received his master’s degree from Cornell University and his PhD from Purdue University. During his career, Moavenzadeh has conducted and supervised major research activities. He has served as a private consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and various United Nations agencies including United Nations Center for Human Settlement and UNIDO. His research interests are in the areas of: “Role of Science and Technology in socio-economic development.” He is the author and co-author of several books.

Mr. Maurice Sonnenberg is the Senior International Advisor to Guggenheim Securities, LLC. He has been an advisor in the fields of foreign policy, international trade, finance and intelligence to five Presidential Administrations.

Last year, Mr. Sonnenberg just completed his Co-Chairmanship of the National Commission for the Review of the Research and Development Programs of the United States Intelligence Community. He is currently a member of the Special Navy Advisory Panel to the U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

Some of the past governmental positions he has held in the fields of intelligence and counter-terrorism are: Member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (eight years), Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, Member of the U.S. Commission on Reducing and Protecting Government Secrecy, the Senior Advisor to the U.S. Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community and member of the Private Sector Committee, and the South-West Border Taskforce of the Homeland Security Advisory Board.

In addition, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations where he served on the Council's Independent Task Force on Terrorist Financing, and was on the Council's Foreign Affairs magazine Advisory Board for ten years.

Prior to Guggenheim, he held the same position at JPMorgan, Bear Stearns & Co, and at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. He has also been a Senior Advisor to the law firms of Hunton & Williams, Manatt Phelps, and Greenberg Traurig.

He has been awarded the Aguila Azteca (Aztec Eagle) by the Mexican government. The highest Presidential and Congressional award the government can bestow on a foreign citizen.

Besides engaging in public speaking, in the past he has appeared as a commentator on domestic and foreign TV in the areas of foreign policy, intel and counterterrorism. On occasion, he indulges in motion picture acting and is a member of the Screen Actors Guild union.

Mr. James ("Jim") Onalfo was coaxed out of retirement by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in 2003. From an IT perspective, the NYPD was understaffed and, worst of all, it lacked a viable disaster recovery plan.

The lack of disaster recovery gave Mr. Onalfo the opportunity to bring to bear skills he'd honed as CIO of blue-chip companies like General Foods and Kraft. With backing from Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mr. Onalfo pushed through a disaster recovery initiative that had languished for years. To alleviate staff shortages, contracts were structured so that vendors continued to support major projects long after deployment.

Within eight years, Mr. Onalfo's record reflected an impressive string of accomplishments. In 2006, the NYPD opened its Real Time Crime Center, a sort-of mission control for city police. The $12 million facility taps into 36 information databases, including emergency calls, crime reports, criminal records and police vehicle locations. It's a one-stop shop for crime data and analysis that's available to all officers and detectives. The department also launched an online case management tool for detectives, completed a long-awaited evidence tracking system and implemented facial recognition technology.

That record, accomplished in one of the nation's most complex bureaucracies, is a testament to Mr. Onalfo's skill and tenacity.

Mr. Onalfo built six high tech centers: RTTC, NEW 911 , facial,I'd, executive war room, NOC, JOC, AND TWC.

Mr. Keith ("Spike") Gentile is an experienced military and business development leader. His background includes tours in, Middle East; Far East; Africa; South America; Europe and Southwest Asia. Mr. Gentile completed a distinguished 30-year career with the US Air Force in 2011, retiring at the rank of Colonel.

Prior to joining L-3 Communications Systems West, he served as the Director of Operations for US Air Forces Central Command overseeing service, joint and multi-national air operations in 21 countries in Southwest Asia. During his service in the US Air Force, Mr. Gentile commanded at strategic, operational and tactical levels throughout the world. He was Vice Commander of AF’s only high-altitude reconnaissance wing responsible for developing and executing worldwide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. In addition, he commanded AF’s largest air support operations group with over 1,000 permanently assigned personnel at eight locations and served as the senior AF advisor to Commanding Generals of XVIII Airborne Corps, US Army Special Operation Command and 3rd Army.

Mr. Gentile also held the position of Chief of Military Programs, Headquarters, US Air Force at the Pentagon and was responsible for functional management, acquisition and programming of AF manned and unmanned aircraft systems and reconnaissance platforms. Finally, he commanded a six-man terminal attack control party team, qualified in special infiltration/exfiltration techniques and weapons employment.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Mr. Gentile holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Computer Science from The Citadel, a Master in Military Studies from the Marine Corps University and a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from the United States Air University.

Mr. Brendan Hannigan is General Manager of IBM Security, an integrated business unit that brings together security software and services. Mr. Hannigan joined IBM in 2011 to lead the security business after serving as the Chief Executive Officer of Q1 Labs Inc., where he oversaw the entire product flow from market requirements to product functionality, beta testing and product launches for industry-leading security intelligence solutions.

Mr. Hannigan has more than 16 years of IT security industry experience. At Q1 Labs Inc., in addition to CEO, he served in a variety of capacities including President and Chief Operating Officer; Executive Vice President - Marketing and Product Engineering; and Vice President - Marketing. His responsibilities included product development, product management, quality assurance and customer support.

Prior to Q1 Labs, Mr. Hannigan also served as Vice President - Marketing of Sockeye Networks (a route-optimization firm acquired by Internap), where he led all marketing and product management functions. He also served as Principal and Chief Operating Officer of J.H. Whitney & Co., LLC, and Director of Network Research at Forrester Research, where he oversaw its most successful practices, covering enterprise networks, security technology and public network services. Mr. Hannigan also held a variety of senior product-development roles at Digital Equipment Corp., Wellfleet Communications and Motorola.

Mr. Hannigan graduated with honors in computer science from University College, Dublin, Ireland.

Mr. Joseph M. Carriere provides senior leadership and expertise to L-3's Advanced Programs professionals to create agile, innovative and mission focused vision and solutions for his customers. L-3 develops and provides advanced mission capability for commercial, DoD, other government agencies and international coalition members.

Mr. Carriere joined the L-3 leadership team and assumed his current position in 2015. He previously served as Harris Corporation's Air Force Senior Executive Account Manager and Client Strategist from 2006 to 2014, and with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory from 2004 to 2006 where he lead DoD communications and information technology efforts.

He had a distinguished 22 year career in the United States Air Force as an Acquisition Officer with numerous awards and accomplishments. His career highlights include: Electronic Systems Center Acquisition Executive for C4ISR systems; Deputy to the Program Executive Officer for Joint Logistics Systems; Program Director for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Peace Shield Program; Director/Deputy Director for Joint MILSATCOM Terminals; and, chief legislative liaison officer for the Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition).

Mr. Carriere holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of Massachusetts; a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology; and, a M.S. in Engineering Management from Western New England College. He is also a graduate of the Air Force’s Air Command and Air War Colleges and holds a certified program management certificate from the Defense Systems Management College.

Mr. Russ Quinn is an experienced military, diplomatic and business development leader. His background includes two tours on the ground in Iraq directly supporting the Iraq Civil Aviation Authority as both a military and State Department advisor, as well as a domestic and international business development experience. He completed a distinguished 26-year career with the US Air Force in 2011, retiring at the rank of Colonel.

Prior to joining L-3 CS-East, Mr. Quinn served as an F-16 Mission Training Center contract instructor pilot with the US Air Force’s 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base, Japan. During his time with L-3 CS-West, he was the Lead Business Development Manager for the Pacific Region working closely with both PACOM and PACAF staffs regarding allied wide band communication requirements.

During his US Air Force service, he commanded the 22nd Fighter Squadron, US Air Forces in Europe’s premier Suppression of Enemy Air Defense squadron employing the HARM Targeting System. He served as the Division Commander for PACAF’s Training and Evaluation Division; as Deputy Group Commander for the Adversary Tactics Group employing the F-16 in the Aggressor role, and as the Lead and Opposing Solo Pilot for the USAF Aerial Demonstration Squadron, Thunderbirds.

A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, Mr. Quinn holds a Bachelor of Organizational Behavior from the US Air Force Academy; a Masters of Aeronautical Science from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University; and, a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He was a Fellow for the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at the Australian Defence College. He currently resides in Philadelphia with his wife Margie and their 13 year-old son Ryan.

Mr. Pat Holub is an experienced warrior diplomat and business development leader. He joined L-3 Communication Systems East earlier this year after completing a distinguished 27-year career with the US Navy, retiring at the rank of Captain.

Mr. Holub's naval career culminated in his leading the US Navy’s Foreign Military Sales directorate where he oversaw business relationships with over 170 countries while generating $6B of new business on an annual basis. Prior to that he served on the Chief of Naval Operations’ staff overseeing the resourcing and budgeting for the DDG 1000, LCS, DDG 51, DDG 51 Flight III programs while managing an annual budget in excess of $10B for ship construction and R&D. His last operational tour in the US Navy was as the Commanding Officer of the USS MCINERNEY (FFG 8), which now serves in the Pakistan Navy as the Pakistan Navy Ship ALAMGIR.

A native of Smithtown, New York, Mr. Holub holds a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology; a Master of Business Administration from Boston University; and a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. In 2008-2009 he served as a Fellow in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s SEMINAR XXI program.

Mr. Bryan Berthy is the Director of Mission Systems for Engineering and Technical Operations at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. In this role he is responsible for providing technical and strategic leadership for Mission Systems, including electronic warfare, data links, radar, electro optical, communications, cyber, ISR, antennas/apertures, and weapons on fighter, air mobility, and ISR platforms. Mr. Berthy has 28 years of technology development and systems development experience in a variety of technology areas. Prior to his current role, Mr. Berthy was Deputy Program Director for the F-16 Block 60 Program.

Throughout his 28-year career, Mr. Berthy has led development of cutting edge avionics systems including the A-12 Targeting FLIR and IRST systems and Advanced Fighter Technology Integration (AFTI)/F-16 Falcon Knight head-steered infra-red system. Mr. Berthy was also the Principle Investigator on the Independent Research and Development (IRAD) program that led to the Electro Optical Distributed Aperture System (EO-DAS) for the F-35.

Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Mr. Berthy served in a variety of executive management positions at a commercial systems and software development company that specialized in visual simulation systems, software project rescue, and large scale database systems.

Mr. Berthy graduated with Honors from the University of Florida with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. He has also completed Masters course work in Electrical Engineering, Engineering Management, and Business Administration at the University of Texas at Arlington. At Lockheed Martin, Mr. Berthy is a graduate of the Corporate Leadership and Executive Assessment Development program at the corporate Center for Leadership Excellence and the Aeronautics Excellence through Development and Growth Engagement program.

Mr. Michael G. Dinning is Director of Multimodal Programs and Partnerships at the Volpe Center, the national research center of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Dinning leads efforts to apply a multimodal approach to transportation and mobility, focusing on cross-cutting issues such as big data in transportation, multimodal payment systems and cyber-physical system security and resilience.

Mr. Dinning has worked at Volpe for over 35 years and has extensive experience managing programs to develop and deploy innovations in transportation. He served as director of Transportation Logistics and Security, leading programs to mitigate cyber and physical security risks, and to introduce innovative situational awareness and logistics management systems throughout the world. Prior to that, he was Executive Director of Business Development and coordinated new business development across the Volpe Center organization.

Dinning facilitates collaboration throughout the transportation community on multimodal issues. He chairs the cyber security efforts of the National Academy of Science’s Transportation Research Board, and participates in a wide variety of organizations involved in developing innovative transportation technology. He is a frequent speaker to industry, academia and government, and has co-authored several books on innovative transportation technology, security and resilience. Dinning has contributed to numerous national initiatives, including the National Infrastructure Advisory Council’s recent recommendations for transportation sector resilience. Dinning also teaches a graduate-level course in transportation security management for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

Ms. Robin Chase is a transportation entrepreneur. She is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world. When Ms. Chase co-founded Zipcar she not only started a business but established the foundation for one of the most important economic and social ideas of our time: the collaborative economy. She also founded Buzzcar, a peer to peer carsharing service in France (now merged with Drivy); and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. She is also co-founder and Executive Chairman of Veniam, a vehicle communications company building the networking fabric for the Internet of Moving Things. She is also author of the newly released book Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism.

With this important book she broadens our thinking about the ways in which the economy is being transformed and showing how the PEERS INC model is changing the very nature of capitalism. When the best of people power is combined with the best of corporate power to form "Peers Inc" organizations a potent creative force is released. The "Inc" in these collaborations delivers the industrial strengths of significant scale and resources, and the "Peers" bring the individual strengths of localization, specialization, and customization together unlocking the power of the collaborative economy. When excess capacity is harnessed by the platform and diverse peers participate, a completely new dynamic is unleashed. Ms Chase is on the Boards of Veniam; the World Resources Institute; and Tucows. She also served on the board of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation; the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce; the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation; the OECD's International Transport Forum Advisory Board; the Massachusetts Governor's Transportation Transition Working Group; and Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force.

Ms. Chase lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including Time 100 Most Influential People; Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators; and BusinessWeek's Top 10 Designers. Ms. Chase graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management; was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow; and, received an honorary Doctorate of Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Dr. Rahmat Shoureshi joined NYIT as provost and vice president for academic affairs in 2011, administering a complex and global academic enterprise. In this role, he is responsible for shaping academic priorities and programs, fiscal management and revenue diversification, attracting and supporting outstanding faculty and academic leadership, providing global education for students, and expanding scholarship and research initiatives, especially in cross-disciplinary areas. With all New York and Global Campus Deans reporting to him, he oversees faculty and curriculum development, online and blended programs’ offering, planning and budgeting, and initiatives for teaching and learning with technology, domestically as well as globally. He initiates new partnerships and dual-degree programs with universities in strategic regions around the globe, and oversees the development of collaborations with business and industry through educational and executive programs, technology transfer and commercialization, and other outreach activities.



For eight years prior to joining NYIT, he served as Dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of Denver. There, he developed five new interdisciplinary degree programs, spearheaded the technology transfer office, and established partnerships with universities overseas while starting joint programs with major companies. He also initiated the development of strategic plans and led a multimillion-dollar fundraising effort while collaborating on education and research programs throughout the university. 



Dr. Shoureshi has been an active researcher with funding from government agencies and industry. His research effort has resulted in more than 250 technical publications and he is the holder of several patents. He has supervised and graduated 80 Ph.D. and M.S. student theses. He is an expert in automation, control systems design and artificial intelligence with applications in: robotics, biomedical engineering, energy/power engineering, structural engineering, and automotive engineering.

After teaching mechanical engineering and conducting research for 11years at Purdue University, Dr. Shoureshi joined the Colorado School of Mines as a distinguished and endowed chair professor of engineering. He served as founding director of National Science Foundation industry/university cooperative research centers in the areas of power engineering and intelligent biomedical devices and musculoskeletal systems, as well as an industry-supported center on automation, robotics, and distributed intelligence. Dr. Shoureshi earned his Ph.D. and MS degrees in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and completed a program in Marketing and Industrial Dynamics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Dr. Rae Zimmerman is Professor of Planning and Public Administration at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and since 1998, Director of the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems. In 2011-2013 she directed Wagner’s Urban Planning Program for the fifth time. Her teaching and research areas are at the intersection of infrastructure, the environment, natural hazards, social equity, and security in the context of the quality of life in cities and how urban infrastructure innovations can be used to adapt to extreme conditions. She has participated in close to 50 grants, directing over $10 million in research funds as Principal Investigator on about three dozen of these grants and co-Principal Investigator or participating senior researcher on about a dozen others. This work has been funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. DOT Region 2 Urban Transportation Research Center, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (through university research centers), state and local government agencies, and other sponsorship.

Dr. Zimmerman's most recent research in transportation consists of projects on multimodal transportation for extreme events, suburban poverty and transit access, and the role of public transit in mandatory pre-event evacuation funded the U.S. DOT Region 2 Urban Transportation Research Center. Her work in infrastructure interdependencies as well as infrastructure recovery after Hurricane Sandy has been funded primarily by the National Science Foundation. In the area of infrastructure security and cyber security in particular, she was a member and co-founder of one of the homeland security centers of excellence, has been a co-PI on an NSF IGERT on cyber security and an NSF Scholars for Service grant both education grants with NYUPoly, and was NYU’s representative on the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) hosted by Dartmouth where she engaged in security research connected with energy technologies.

Dr. Zimmerman authored Transport, the Environment and Security (2012) and authored or co-authored over one hundred other publications. She is active on numerous advisory boards and committees and currently serves as an appointed member on the third NYC Panel on Climate Change, the Transportation Research Board’s Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection committee, and the NAS Committee on Pathways to Urban Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities. She is a Fellow of AAAS, a Fellow and past president of the Society for Risk Analysis, and is on editorial boards of several risk and technology journals. She received her B.A. in Chemistry from the University of California (Berkeley); a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Ph.D. in planning from Columbia University.

Mr. Tim Baker is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at MTA Bridges and Tunnels, which operates all toll bridges and tunnels in New York City and is the largest toll collector in the United States. In his 22 year career there, he has had broad responsibilities for operations, planning, and project implementation. His current role is to ensure that the agency is prepared for the challenges and opportunities of rapidly changing technology in transportation and toll technology.

Prior to the MTA, Tim worked as an economist at DRI/McGraw-Hill, Chase and Wharton Econometrics, and IBM corporate headquarters. He also studied economics at the University of Chicago and the City University of New York.

Ms. Prachi Vakharia leads Business Development and Expansion at RideAmigos. She grew up between Bombay, Hong-Kong and London, and has lived in Boston and Washington DC — cities and cultures that have helped to create her views on people, trade and transportation, which she uses to advance RideAmigos in cities to aid people and trade through transportation.

Mr. Mysore Nagaraja is Chairman and Co-founder of Spartan Solutions, LLC. He is a proven leader and innovator who has successfully planned and delivered the largest urban transportation construction projects in North America, winning international acclaim and accolades for excellence in design and execution. He is also a recognized leader in sustainability and Green design and is very well respected by the construction industry for resolution of contract disputes.

In his most recent position at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Mr. Nagaraja reported directly to the Executive Director of the MTA and was responsible for advancing the MTA's multi-billion dollar capital system expansion projects, including East Side Access, Second Avenue Subway and the Extension of the No. 7 train to the West Side of Manhattan. He also spearheaded two Lower Manhattan projects, the Fulton Transit Center and the New South Ferry Subway station Complex, in addition to overseeing and coordinating the MTA's extensive security capital construction projects. Mr. Nagaraja succeeded in advancing an $18 billion system expansion program from inception (EIS) to construction phase in just four years.

Prior to becoming President of the Capital Construction Company, Mr Nagaraja was the Senior Vice President and Chief Engineer of the Department of Capital Program Management at New York City Transit. Under his leadership, CPM achieved a standard of excellence unrivaled by its peers in public transportation. CPM was the first public agency in New York State to receive the coveted Empire State Advantage Gold Certification. Awarded in 2002, the Gold level is reserved for only those organizations in the public or private sectors that have achieved "best-in-class leadership and management systems." Under Mr. Nagaraja's leadership, NYCT CPM was the first public agency in the country to secure ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications. During his tenure at CPM, he also led the reconstruction of the Number 1 subway line, after 9/11, to completion in just nine months. Mr. Nagaraja has delivered more than $30 billion in capital projects for the MTA and has a strong reputation for staying within budget and completing projects on or ahead of schedule.

Mr. Nagaraja, as Chief Engineer for MTA NYCT (1989 to 2003), was the Final and Binding Contract Dispute Resolution Officer for hundreds of disputes. He has earned a great reputation as a fair, tough and impartial judge. He joined New York City Transit as a Project Manager in August 1985 and prior to that, he managed large capital construction projects around the world, including refineries and fertilizers, for an international firm.

Mr. Nagaraja has a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from University of Mysore in India and an M.S. Degree from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the States of New York and New Jersey and belongs to a number of professional organizations including being a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a professional member of the American Institute of Steel Construction and a board member of New York Building Congress. He is the recipient of many professional and humanitarian awards including The Milton Pikarski Distinguished Leadership in Transportation Award from City College (CUNY) in 1998, Municipal Engineer of the Year in 2000, the Green Star Award for Environmental Management in 2002, Person of The Year from CMAA in 2003, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from USDOT in 2008.

Mr. Nagaraja also serves as an advisor to a number of agencies and firms on a broad range of issues including Capital Program management, development and organization; sustainability programs; dispute and contract resolution; and development and implementation of transportation security programs. He is now a founding partner at Spartan Solutions, LLC, an Infrastructure and Capital Program Management Consulting Company based in Washington, DC with branch offices in New York City.

Mr. Feniosky Peña-Mora is a leading engineer with vast experience managing infrastructure and construction projects in New York, the United States, and across the globe. He is currently the Edwin Howard Armstrong Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, professor of earth and environmental engineering, and professor of computer science at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), where he has taught since 2009. Mr. Peña-Mora is also the founding partner of Peña-Alcántara Consultants, Inc., a firm specializing in the use of information technology and construction management techniques in infrastructure projects.

Prior to joining the Columbia Engineering faculty, Mr. Peña-Mora was associate provost and the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Peña-Mora moved to Washington Heights from the Dominican Republic in 1988, joining his mother who had emigrated 10 years earlier and was working on a factory line. He received a Doctor of Science and Master of Science in civil engineering from MIT and a BS in civil engineering, magna cum laude, from the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Mr. Peña-Mora’s research focuses include developing information technology support for collaboration in preparedness, response, and recovery during disasters such as the 9-11 terrorist attack and Hurricane Katrina. He is also a leader in change management, conflict resolution, sustainable construction, and processes integration during the design and development of large-scale civil engineering systems.

He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scholarly publications and holds five patents, one pending patent, and one provisional patent. He has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (known as PECASE), National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the James R. Croes Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering and the Construction Management Awards, FIATECH Engineering & Technology Innovation Award, the American Society Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering and the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management best paper awards.

Mr. Steve Fleischli is a Senior Attorney* and Director of the Water Program. Most recently, he led the Water Program’s Water & Climate Team. His areas of emphasis include water quality, climate preparedness and energy & water issues. Prior to joining NRDC in 2010, Mr. Fleischli served as President of Waterkeeper Alliance, an international environmental organization supporting local watershed programs (such as Riverkeepers, Baykeepers and Soundkeepers) in nearly 200 communities across six continents.

He also served as Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance (2003-2007) and as the Santa Monica Baykeeper in Los Angeles (1999-2003). He has held positions as a Legal & Policy Analyst for Heal the Bay and as an adjunct law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law. He is a graduate of UCLA School of Law and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with majors in Economics; Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology; and Environmental Conservation.

Dr. Tariq Samad is a Corporate Fellow with Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions, based in Minneapolis, U.S.A. His career with Honeywell has spanned 29 years, during which time he has contributed to and led automation and control technology developments for applications in electric power systems, clean energy, building management, the process industries, automotive engines, unmanned aircraft, and advanced manufacturing. His research interests relate broadly to automation, intelligence, and autonomy for complex engineering systems.

Dr. Samad is the President of the American Automatic Control Council for 2014-15 and he served as the President of IEEE Control Systems Society in 2009. He was editor-in-chief of IEEE Control Systems Magazine from 1998 to 2003. He was the General Chair for the 2012 American Control Conference (Montréal). He currently chairs the newly formed Industry Committee for the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) that is developing recommendations for improving university/industry collaborations in control and automation. His service as workshop chair includes the International Workshop on Smart City (Hangzhou, China, Sept. 2013), the Workshop on Human Cyberphysical Systems: Control for Human Welfare (Paris, Sept. 2014), and Control at Large Scales: Energy Markets and Responsive Grids (Minneapolis, May 2016). He represents Honeywell on the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute and he was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the recipient of a few awards including the 2008 IEEE CSS Control Systems Technology Award, a Distinguished Member Award from IEEE CSS, an IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and an Excellence Award from the Society of Technical Communications (NYC Metro Chapter) in 2002.

Dr. Samad holds 20 patents and has authored or coauthored over 100 conference and journal publications. He has also authored one book and edited several books and reports. These include the online report, The Impact of Control Technology (http://ieeecss.org/main/IoCT-report, http://ieeecss.org/general/IoCT2-report), and the Encyclopedia of Systems and Control (co-editor-in-chief, Springer, 2014). He is the editor-in-chief of IEEE Press. Dr. Samad holds a B.S. degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Mr. Michael Sonnenfeldt is the founder of TIGER 21, the nation's premier network of learning groups for high net worth investors. He also is Chairman of Carmanah Technologies Corp., a Canadian Public company that designs, manufactures and distributes solar powered products and systems for industrial applications globally. Through his private investment company, MUUS & Company, Mr Sonnenefledt has holdings in solar, battery, and other technologies related to alternative energy infrastructure applications.

From 1991 to 1998, Mr. Sonnenfeldt founded and led Emmes & Company; a real estate investment boutique that was a major buyer of distressed portfolios in the early 90's and grew to over a billion dollars in assets by the time he sold his interest in 1998. In 1980, Mr. Sonnenfeldt conceived and initiated the then world's largest commercial renovation, commencing the transformation of the 2.4 million sq. ft. Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. Mr. Sonnenfeldt received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa.

Mr. Sonnenfeldt has been actively involved over the last twenty-five years at senior levels in numerous nonprofit organizations focused on the environment, national security, Middle East peace, international peacekeeping, the US/UN relationship, the removal of land mines and communal development. Mr. Sonnenfeldt was named a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Business at MIT for the 2003/4 school year, to co-teach "Business and the Nation's Security" which he spent a year developing with a team he assembled. Mr. Sonnenfeldt lives in New York City.

Mr. James Kaplan is a Partner in McKinsey & Company's Business Technology Office in New York. Mr. Kaplan leads McKinsey's Infrastructure & Cyber Security practices. He assists leading institutions in financial services, advanced manufacturing and health care use business technology effectively, with a particular focus on cybersecurity strategy, technology transformation and cloud computing. He also assists financial sponsors in making investments in the enterprise infrastructure and cybersecurity markets. Example of his recent client work include:

• Transformation of a major bank's technology infrastructure capabilities, including implementation of a client-centric operating model, articulation of multi-year cost reduction roadmap, development of RFPs required for simplified vendor strategy and implementation of lean infrastructure processes
• Implementation of cybersecurity roadmap for major health care provider, prioritizing business risks, defining major initiatives, developing program structure and quantifying investment program
• Developing of IT and shared services strategy for advanced manufacturer, including identification of shared business processes, definition of future state technology architecture and development of multi-year business case

He convenes the Chief Infrastructure Technology Executives Roundtable (CITER), the Insurance Cybersecurity Executive Roundtable (ICER) and the Health Care CISO Group (HCG). Mr. Kaplan is the lead author of "Beyond Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Digital Business" (Wiley, 2015) and has presented on "Risk & Responsibility in a Hyperconnected World" at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos. He has published on cybersecurity and other business technology issues in the McKinsey Quarterly, the Financial Times and the Harvard Business Review blog network and quoted in Wall Street Journal, Optimize, CIO, Forbes and other periodicals.

Mr. Kaplan received an A.B. in History from Brown University and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Muneer Baig is Founder/President/CEO of SYSUSA, Inc., a technology company helping organizations build, implement and maintain a comprehensive Information Security program. Mr. Baig is experienced in identifying, evaluating, strategizing and remediating security risks. He has served in several positions of responsibility focused on helping organization increase awareness of evolving cyber security threats and create program that ensure security, enable innovation and increase collaboration across organization.

Prior to venturing into SYSUSA, Mr. Baig was responsible for the development and execution of an enterprise wide information security assessment program at Microsoft. Mr. Baig delivered security assessment services to Microsoft, its partners and vendors globally. Mr. Baig trained Microsoft security professionals globally, creating localized regional teams to deliver information security assessment services.

Mr. Baig graduated from Kashmir, India in 1991. Mr. Baigs aspiration to serve the community led him to join the University of Virginia Sorensen Institute’s Political Leadership Program (PLP) and Candidates Training Program (CTP). He graduated from the PLP in 2006 and from the CTP in 2009.

Mr. Baig has served on several board and committees in Prince William County, Virginia, including; Department of Social Services Board; Human Rights Commission; Hylton Performing Arts Center Executive Committee; Zoning and Ordinance Review Board; and the Strategic Transportation Task Force.

Mr. Baig’s current industry certifications include CRISC, C|CICO, G2700, CPEng, CISM, COM, CISSP, ITIL, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, ISO 27001 Trainer.

Mr. Michael Brew received a B.S., Biology, Cornell University, 1988; J.D., with distinction, Hofstra University School of Law, 1992. He was admitted to the Courts of the State of New York, U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He was associated with Nixon, Hargrave, Devans & Doyle (1992-1996); Corporate Counsel, NEC USA, Inc. (1996-1999); associated with Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto (1999-2000); associated with Dilworth & Barrese (2000-2003).

Mr Brew is also a member of the American Bar Association, New York Bar Association and New York Intellectual Property Law Association. He is experienced in all phases of patent and trademark prosecution and litigation, as well as unfair competition and trade secrets. Also experienced in opinions, due diligence and licensing. His fields of technology include pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, biotechnology, immunology, vaccines, medical devices, organic chemistry, adhesives, polymers, agrochemicals, cosmetic formulations, foods and paper processing.

Ms. Ana Carcani Rold is the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the Diplomatic Courier, a global affairs magazine. Rold is also one of the founders of a corporate publishing firm, Medauras Global LLC, which provides business leaders with reports on the political and economic situation of countries around the world, specializing on conflict-prone or conflict-afflicted countries. Since 2009 Rold has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the annual commemorative publications of the G7, G20, and APEC Summits.  She covered and managed the editorial production of these publications for the Summits in Italy, Canada, South Korea, the United States, France, as well as the G8 and NATO in the United States, the G20 in Mexico, and the APEC Summit in Russia.

In tandem with her publishing and editorial work, Rold teaches Comparative Politics and Political Science at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. At Northeastern, she has also served as Director of the Cyprus Program and co-Director for the Egypt Program for Northeastern's Dialogue of Civilizations Initiative.  In Washington, DC, Rold has worked with a number of organizations including the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the UN Foundation (UNF), and the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP).

Rold received a Masters in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, with a focus on the negotiation of Peace Treaties and Alternative Dispute Resolution at American University and a Bachelor's Degree in International Affairs at Northeastern University. Rold is a member of the National Press Club (NPC), a Senior Fellow at the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), and a Member of the Council of Women’s Democracy Network (WDN) in Washington, DC.

Mr. Thomas Miller oversees client relations with the international diplomatic community for Bloomberg BNA’s Cross Platform Organization. He has assisted embassies in Washington DC and foreign consulates across the United States in their outreach efforts to promote trade and investment between their countries and the American business and investor communities, primarily through conferences, seminars, and other events. In 2014 Tom moved to BBNA from Bloomberg Government, where he was responsible for launching the new BGOV service to diplomatic officials in the political, economic, defense and communications sections at the embassies. In this role, he helped diplomatic officials better understand the impact of U.S. government policies on their countries through the deployment of the Bloomberg Government tools.

Prior to joining Bloomberg, Tom was a founding Board Member and Vice President of Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), a non-profit organization founded by major American corporations after the 9/11 attacks. He worked with the U.S. Department of State on public diplomacy programs in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and helped with the Department’s first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. He was also the co-creator of CultureSpan: A Workshop in Global Corporate Diplomacy.

Prior to joining BDA, Tom was Managing Director with the Roper Organization, one of the world’s leading market and public opinion research firms, where he managed all of the company’s global marketing, branding, consumer trend and public opinion/public affairs insight services. His work with Roper covered more than 50 countries, and he has traveled to almost all of them. Tom began his career at Hudson Research Europe, a Paris-based political, economic and social risk forecasting firm serving major multinational corporations and banks, where he rose to the position of Managing Director.

His articles and opinions have appeared widely in the media, including The International Herald Tribune, London Times, Le Monde, Asahi Evening News, Asia Media Week, and he has appeared on Good Morning America, Adam Smith’s Money World, Wall Street Week, and all the major U.S. news networks. He is an honors graduate of Yale University (B.A.) and the London School of Economics (M.Sc.). He is married, has four children, and lives in Manhattan.

Mr. Mohamed Elkhashab has been the CEO and President of Reach Media Inc. which is the exclusive distribution, marketing, and production arm of ART (Arab Radio & Television) in North America. He also is the founder of ART America which is a TV network designed for the Arabs living in North America and under Reach Media holds the exclusive distribution rights for many other top Arab TV networks.

Arab Radio and Television Network (Acronym: ART) is an Arabic – language television network characterized by its multitude of channels. It is based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The company was founded in October 1993. ART is a private company specializing in family entertainment, including movies, music and sport. ART is common in Saudi Arabia for its exclusive sports event broadcasts, particularly the Saudi Leagues. ART produces over 6,000 live and recorded shows every year including family oriented dramas, series, plays, sports programs, music videos and documentaries. The network has the largest Arabic movie library in the Arab world and (as part of the AMC conglomerate) has been associated with leading film production studios in the Arab world for well over 30 years. ART has remained focused on providing the Arab world with a diverse and exciting spectrum of family entertainment while maintaining a commitment to providing quality viewing services and preserving the integral traditional values of Arab culture. ART broadcasts internationally, expanding its coverage to North America, Europe and Australia. ART is Available 24 hours a day in North America; ART serves Arab Americans by linking them to their homeland with programming in their own language. ART's foundation is based on the largest general entertainment library in the Arab world. In addition, ART has programming targeted to second generation Arab Americans.

Mr. Elkhashab is not only considered among the great ambassadors to the United States in enhancing Arab-US Media relations but is also a pioneer of the industry. He founded Reach Media in 1996 with the intension of bringing all the top programs from the Arab world into the homes of Arabs abroad. REACH Media has established itself to be leading marketer of products and services to not only Arab but various ethnic communities across North America. By marketing and distributing top tier foreign language TV channels on various platforms, REACH Media has developed a bond with communities it serves. That bond has evolved to the ability to market various different products to a desirable consumer base.

Mr. Elkhashab holds a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Alexandria and also a M.S. in construction management from PolyTech. With such a diverse background, Mr. Elkhashab continues to impact the media industry while continuing his innovations in media with diversifying viewing options. He is also now hosting a live TV Show weekly from New York to educate the Arab viewers of all the latest events happening in the Arab world and how it directly or indirectly affects them here living miles away. Through his high network of both Arabs and Americans in the media, Mr. Elkhashab offers a unique insight from the perspective of the person that has experienced both media environments.

Dr. Massoud Amin is Chairman of the IEEE Smart Grid and Chairman of the Texas Reliability Entity (TexasRE). Since March 2003 Dr. Amin has served as director of the Technological Leadership Institute (TLI), holds the Honeywell/H.W. Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership, is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and is a professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

At TLI, he leads 8 endowed chairs and 64 associated senior faculty from across nine colleges on the University of Minnesota, executives from industry, and governmental leaders, to develop local and global leaders for technology enterprises. His responsibilities at TLI include direction and oversight of all academic, financial and administrative elements of TLI's educational, research, and consulting programs. In addition, Dr. Amin leads the Master of Science in Management of Technology (MOT) program as its Director of Graduate Studies (2003-2011, 2014- present). He founded the Master of Science in Security Technologies (MSST) program in 2009 and served as its Director of Graduate Studies during 2009-2013. He founded the Master of Science in Medical Device Innovation (MS-MDI) program in 2013.

His R&D work is focused on enabling smart, secure, and resilient interdependent infrastructures. He and his team develops predictive system identification methods coupled with analytical and multi-domain modelling, fast simulation, optimization, testing methodologies, and applies them to complex and large dynamical systems. A major part of his work involves enabling smarter, more secure, sustainable and resilient critical infrastructures for interdependent energy, computer networks, communications, transportation and economic systems. He has researched and written about smart self-healing grid concepts and solutions for two decades. He has led research, development and deployment of smart grids, and the enhancement of critical infrastructures' security during this period and is considered the "Father of smart grid".

His research focuses on two areas:

1. Global transition dynamics to enhance resilience, agility, security and efficiency of complex dynamic systems. These systems include national critical infrastructures for interdependent energy, computer networks, communications, transportation and economic systems.
2. Strategic Technology Analyses and Foresight: Technology scanning, mapping, and valuation to identify new science and technology-based opportunities that meet the needs and aspirations of today's consumers, companies and the broader society. This thrust builds coherence between short- and longer-term R&D opportunities and their potential impact.

Prior to joining the University of Minnesota in March 2003, Dr. Amin held positions of increased responsibility including Area Manager of Infrastructure Security, Grid Operations/Planning, and Energy Markets at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California. In the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11, he directed all security-related research and development at EPRI, including the Infrastructure Security Initiative (ISI) and the Enterprise Information Security (EIS). While working at EPRI Dr. Amin conceived and articulated the vision of a smart self-healing grid to enhance reliability, improve security, increase resilience and reduce the cost of energy to consumers. He has advised Governor Ridge and his staff at the U.S. OHS/DHS, staff at the White House and OSTP, Director of the NSF, Undersecretaries at the U.S. DoE and DoD, DIA, FBI, and other agencies, innovating effective solutions and pragmatic strategies against advanced threats.

Post 9/11, he served as chairman of power and energy for ASME's Critical Asset Protection Initiative (2002-2005), founding member of the IEEE Computer Society's Task Force on Security and Privacy (2002-2006), and is the founding chairman of the IEEE smart grid newsletter (2010-2014), Chairman of IEEE Smart Grid (2013- present), and the IEEE Control Systems Technical Committee on Smart Grids (2009-present). He serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Texas RE (12/2013-present, Vice Chair 12/12-12/13, Chair of the Audit & Governance Committee, 2010-2012), is an independent BoD member and chaired the hearing committee of the Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO). He served as a member of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE) at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (2001-2007) and member of the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BMSA) at the National Academy of Sciences (2006-2009).

Prior to joining EPRI, he was an associate professor of systems science & mathematics and associate director of the Center for Optimization & Control at Washington University in St. Louis. During his 12 years at Washington University, he was one of the main contributors to several projects with United States Air Force, NASA-Ames, Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, MEMC, ESCO, Systems & Electronics Inc. and United Van Lines. He has worked with the U.S. military and government, universities, companies, and private agencies from across the world, focusing on theoretical and practical aspects of reconfigurable and self-repairing controls, infrastructure security, risk-based decision making, system optimization, and differential game theory for aerospace, energy, and transportation applications.

He is the author of over 200 peer-reviewed publications and editor of 7 collections of manuscripts, and served on the editorial boards of six academic journals.

He is a fellow of the ASME and IIIA, and is a member of Sigma Xi (served as President of the Minnesota Chapter 2011-2013), Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, a senior member of IEEE, AAAS, AIAA, and NY Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Amin holds B.S. (cum laude), and M.S. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in systems science and mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

He has been recognized by his alma maters, receiving the 2011 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award at Washington University, and the 2013 Outstanding Senior Alumni Award at the University of Massachusetts.

He was three times Professor of the Year at Washington University in St. Louis (1992-1995), and was inducted into the University of Minnesota's Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2008.

At EPRI he received several awards including six EPRI Performance Recognition Awards for leadership in three areas, the 2002 President's Award for the Infrastructure Security Initiative, and twice received the Chauncey Award, the Institute's highest honor.

For additional information please see http://massoud-amin.umn.edu and http://tli.umn.edu/faculty/massoud-amin-dsc.

Mr. Peter Gish has served on the Board of Directors of First Wind (formerly UPC Wind Partners) since 2006. Mr. Gish is currently a Partner, Co-founder and Board Member of UPC Renewables, a company dedicated to developing wind and solar projects in Europe and Asia and is Managing Director of UPC North Africa Wind Partners.

In December 2010 Mr. Gish was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of Apparent, Inc, a California based solar energy company with several patents for an innovative power extraction technology. Mr. Gish previously served as Corporate and Project Counsel and eventually Managing Director for UPC International Partnership CV II in Europe from 1997, completing several of the largest wind project financings globally prior to co-founding First Wind in 2001. Mr. Gish has extensive experience in the acquisition, development, financing and operation of wind parks in North America, North Africa and Europe and has published several articles on wind power financing.

He has given testimony before the House Judicial Committee, Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, and has assisted in the development of state legislation in support of renewable energy. He is a member of the Massachusetts and Connecticut Bars and serves on the Steering Committee of the National Wind Coordinating Committee. Mr. Gish has been a lecturer in finance and public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Graduate School of Management. He has a Bachelors Degree in Religion (Magna Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa) from Dartmouth College, Juris Doctor Degree (Cum Laude) from Boston College Law School, and a Masters Degree in Jurisprudence (Honors) from Oxford University.

Mr. Andreas Sandre is a Press and Public Affairs Officer at the Embassy of Italy in Washington DC. He is the author of Digital Diplomacy: Conversations on Innovation in Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield, January 2015) and of Twitter for Diplomats (February 2013). He has contributed articles on foreign policy and digital diplomacy to numerous specialized publications, including the DiploFoundation, the Global Policy Journal, and BigThink.

Mr. Mohammed Barakat assumed his position as Director at the US-Qatar Business Council, Washington DC office in June 2013. In this position, he works with the public and private sectors to promote new and expanded business relations between U.S. and Qatari companies. In addition, he is involved and manages wide range of activities in programs, advisory services, market research, and member services. He also provides business and cultural advisory services to both US and Qatari companies.

Prior to joining The US-Qatar Business Council, Mr. Barakat was a business strategy advisor at the US-Saudi Business Council (2011-2013) where he provided business and strategy advisory services to both US and Saudi companies across different industries to facilitate trade and investment between both countries. Earlier in his career, he worked in business development for a major Qatari holding group headquarters expanding their international partnership and business portfolio (2008-2011). He also worked in the United Arab Emirates as a marketing manager for a major construction and engineering group (2006-2008).

Previously, and under different capacities, Mr. Barakat developed strategic business plans and provided political and economic analysis, social analysis, and security analysis for several companies and organization in Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, and the United States (2004-2006).

He currently resides in Washington DC where he is actively involved with the Middle Eastern business and cultural community.

Mr. Robert Castro serves at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) from 2004-07 as Chief of Staff (rank-equivalent of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary) and prior, as Special Assistant for Congressional and Business Affairs, during the U.S. Government's momentous period of accelerated overseas construction, property acquisition, and inter-agency expansion. Diplomatic facilities are complex, multi-functional infrastructure whose planning and execution require coordination of various tenants and public stakeholders, with adherence to varying international standards. OBO also has global oversight of the diplomatic workforce's Safety, Health, Environmental Management, and Emergency Response protocols.

Mr. Castro currently advises large corporations and smaller emerging technology companies on international market development and partnering on government-sponsored projects. With a background in public opinion research, business strategy & operations, and international trade, health, infrastructure, & technology policy, he has over twenty-five years combined government, corporate, and entrepreneurial business experience, including Public-Private Partnerships and community development initiatives.

In his previous corporate life, Mr. Castro served as Director of Global Security Policy for Lockheed Martin, developing new business and fostering technology transfer to the Diplomacy and Development spheres, including SmartGrid, ICT, cyber security, biometric, and identity/case management. Previously, he advised Fortune 500 companies and elected officials on public affairs campaigns as Managing Vice President of an internationally renowned polling firm, Luntz Research. Pharmaceutical and other emerging technology companies have engaged him to help protect their intellectual property rights and market share overseas, and he has participated in high-level trade missions and ministerial conferences in both his official and private capacities.

During a Capitol Hill career spanning over 10 years, Mr. Castro served as Professional Staff for Congress's joint Technology Assessment Board and as Legislative Director for leading members of the House Ways & Means, Appropriations, Science & Technology, and Transportation & Infrastructure committees. Later, he independently advised Congressional leadership, committee chairmen, and elected officials at federal, state and local levels.

Mr. Castro has been quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Times, National Journal's Congress Daily, and various trade press; he has appeared on CNN/International, National Public Radio, C-SPAN, and Univision. He has authored published articles based upon his research and subject matter expertise and contributed to Think Tank studies. A perennial delegate to the Kellogg Innovation Network/KIN Global Dialogues at Northwestern University, he was recently invited to join the Reboot Fellows program, providing CEO and Boardroom advisory. He also serves on international alumni committees for his alma mater, Georgetown University.

Mr. Castro is married to a career Foreign Service Officer, currently assigned to U.S. Embassy Manama, Bahrain, with previous postings in Egypt and Mexico.

Dr. Bessma Momani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI). Dr. Momani was formerly a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Mortara Center. She is a 2015 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and a Fulbright Scholar.

She has authored and co-edited over eight books and over 65 scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters that have examined the IMF, the World Bank, petrodollars, the Middle East, and Arab youth. Dr. Momani has received numerous Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council awards and prizes for her research on global economic governance and political economy of the Middle East. Her most recent book, Arab Dawn, was published by the University of Toronto Press and has received wide praise for its innovative look at the Middle East and its economic potential.

Dr. Momani has been a public commentator and analyst on the Global Economy, Middle East and the Arab Spring. She is a regular contributor to CBC radio and is a Middle East analyst on CTV News, CBC's The National, Al-Jazeera English, Bloomberg TV, Business News Network (BNN) and TVOs the Agenda. Dr. Momani is a regular contributor to national and international media on the Arab Spring and on global economic governance issues. She has written for the New York Times, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Ottawa Citizen, and many other reputable international newspapers. She sits on the boards of the Canadian Arab Business Council, The Canadian Arab Institute and the Centre for Security Governance.

Mr. Seth Cannon, B.S., Electrical Engineering, Brigham Young University, 2000; J.D., Case Western Reserve University Law School, 2004; M.S., Electrical Engineering, Brigham Young University, 2005. Admitted to the Courts of the States of New York and Massachusetts, and registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Associated with Hamilton, Brook, Smith & Reynolds, PC (2004-2006) and Proskauer Rose LLP (2006-2009).

Mr. Cannon is a member of the American Bar Association and experienced in all aspects of patent and trade secret litigation, including: foreign and domestic patent prosecution; due diligence, clearance, and patentability investigations; counseling; and licensing. Fields of technology include medical devices; analog and digital electronics; telecommunications; networking; data storage; optics; lasers; electromagnetics; mechanical and electro-mechanical devices; energy storage devices; control systems; digital signal processing; digital image processing; computer systems; software; business methods; nanotechnology; digital cameras; audio/video recording and playback; and semiconductors.

Mr. Mohamed Malouche is the board chairman of the largest Tunisian professional diaspora organization in the US, as well as a board member and the treasurer of the $100M Tunisian American Enterprise Fund, a fund established by the US government to support the post revolution economic transition with a particular focus on Tunisian SME's and entrepreneurs.

In 2002, he founded Promo Tunisia, an advisory firm supporting US companies seeking to expand in North Africa.

One of the key objectives of the organization is to foster further economic ties, cooperation and exchanges between the US and Tunisia through conferences where Tunisia's value proposition is detailed. They also conduct programs, such as the organizations's 200k handicraft export program and 250k mentorship program, to foster young entrepreneurs in Tunisia.

Mr. Malouche has been providing economic counsel to governmental actions related to innovation and entrepreneurship, in particular a US-Tunisia partnership for the promotion of technology innovation, and several programs to enhance young Tunisian entrepreneurs' soft skills. He is a frequent speaker in numerous US-Tunisia conferences including the State Department, Clinton Global Initiative, the Doha forum, several universities and think tanks and in media such as CNN or NPR.

Mr. Malouche holds an MBA from Telecom Paris in France and a Masters in Telecommunications from Michigan State University. He has been a management consultant the past 16 years as a Principal at American Management Syatems Inc. until 2006 and is currently with Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Mr. Louis ("Lou") Zacharilla is a social entrepreneur who is credited with initiating the global Intelligent Community movement. As the Co-Founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, a global think tank and foundation which studies "energized communities" for the new century, he developed the Intelligent Community of the Year Awards program. Through the New York-based organization, he helps community thought leaders to understand and implement the best practices of the world’s leading communities based on five criteria established in the Intelligent Community Forum's landmark 2001 study.

He is a frequent keynote speaker and moderator at conferences and events on a range of topics. In 2012 he was one of three people in the world quoted in the influential annual Wealth Report on the world’s best cities of the future. In December 2012 he was invited to participate in the Nobel Peace Prize event dialogue on ways to create more open and free societies. Mr. Zacharilla is the co-author of three books, Broadband Economies: Building the Community for the 21st Century, Seizing Our Destiny and B2B Without the BS. He also writes a regular column for Satellite Executive Briefing magazine. His work was the subject of a multi-part series in Taiwan’s Ideas Magazine in 2011 and he was recently featured in Mayors & Cities Magazine and Smart+Connected Communities. He is also featured in a video for the City of Stockholm (ICF’s 2009 Intelligent Community of the Year).

Mr. Zacharilla oversees the formation of Institutes for the Study of the Intelligent Community across the globe. Mr. Zacharilla has served as an adjunct professor at New York’s Fordham University, is a guest lecturer at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute’s School of Innovation Technology & Enterprise and recently lectured at Central European University (Budapest). He was named a judge for the French-based World E-Democracy Awards and was elected a member of the board of trustees at Walsh University (Ohio, USA). He was named by the government of Australia as a member of the New York Dialogue, a group of leaders from multi-disciplines who continue a global dialogue among the two nations. He holds a Masters degree from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA). He was born in Lyons, New York and lives in Manhattan.

Mr. Suneet Singh Tuli is the founder and CEO of DataWind Ltd., and responsible for its overall vision, strategy and execution. He has 23 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur, having previously launched two successful companies that conducted Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on the NASDAQ stock market. At DataWind and previous ventures, patented technologies were created to develop scanning, printing and imaging products that set world records in both price and performance. The innovative products and technologies created through these ventures have received numerous awards and accolades, including recognition by the Guinness Book of Records. Most recently, DataWind’s Aakash/UbiSlate tablets have received worldwide attention, as the Company executes a vision to empower the next three billion people with computing and Internet access. On November 28, 2012, DataWind’s Aakash2 tablet computer was launched at the United Nations by the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

He has been recognized by Forbes magazine in its 2012 Impact 15 list as a “classroom revolutionary”, using innovative technologies to reinvent education globally. He has also been recognized as the entrepreneur of the year for 2012 at the World Sikh Awards.

DataWind has been recognized as the UK’s Most Innovative Mobile Company for 2012 by UK Trade & Investment and also received the Technology Achievement Award by the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

He regularly speaks about social innovation at various forums internationally. Among others, he spoke at the Internet Freedom Conference in Stockholm, the Beyond Access conference in Washington, D.C. and the Digital World conference in Dhaka. He graduated in 1990 with a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Science in Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Mr. Raj Pande has more than 20 years extensive experience advising clients in corporate matters and the energy and infrastructure sectors in the U.S., Latin America and Asia. He is well recognized for his work on large, complex and innovative transactions and in the past 12 years he has been the lead partner on nine projects that have received “Deal of the Year” award recognition from leading publications including Project Finance International (Thomson Reuters) andInfrastructure Journal and Project Finance Magazine (Euromoney), among others.

In the energy, and project finance and development sectors, Mr. Pande represents project sponsors and developers, banks, financial institutions, multilateral development agencies and export credit agencies, investment funds, contractors, suppliers, and other participants on a broad range of project and energy-related transactions. His project development and finance experience includes: conventional, renewable and nuclear power generation plants; oil and petrochemical refineries; upstream and downstream gas and LNG facilities and terminals; LNG ships; telecommunications, road, water and other infrastructure facilities and structures; and greenfield manufacturing and industrial facilities. He also has broad-based experience advising buyers, sellers, investors, and acquisition finance lenders on a wide range of complex mergers, acquisitions and dispositions, strategic investments, disinvestments and recapitalizations across several industry sectors.

Mr. Pande is widely recognized for his experience in the area of oil, gas and LNG. He advises sponsors and developers, lenders, oil and gas majors, pipeline companies, and ship owners on transactions and financings involving LNG export and import facilities and ships, oil and petrochemical refineries, and gas facilities and pipelines, including in some of the largest global transactions to have taken place.

Mr. Pande is chair of the firm’s Japan practice and co-chair of the Asia Steering Committee. He is a frequent speaker and author on energy and project development and finance. Prior to practicing law, he was a professional consultant engineer with SNC Lavalin, designing refineries, power plants and nuclear control systems.

Mr. Pande has been consistently recognized for more than 18 years as a “Leading Lawyer” for Project Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions by Chamber’s Global Experts; Chambers U.S.A.; Chambers Asia; International Financial Law Review(IFLR); Global Counsel 3000; The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers; Legal Media’s Guide to the World’s Leading Energy and Natural Resource Lawyers; The Asia Pacific Legal 500; The Latin America Legal 500;Project Finance Expert Guide; Asia Law (Euromoney); and the Institutional Investor, Inc. Expert Guide to the World’s Leading Energy Lawyers. Named “Deal Maker of the Year,” Finance Monthly and a Leading Lawyer for Telecommunications by Euromoney’s Special Edition Guide to the World’s Leading Telecommunications Lawyers.

Mr. William R. Gregory is a seasoned emerging markets business leader, with extensive experience developing and managing complex, intercontinental supply chains in some of the most difficult markets. He has extensive on the ground experience in driving cost savings and returning high value to investors across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, and has organically created and managed local solutions to global problems on five continents.

Mr. Gregory is a graduate of Georgetown University, a Certified Islamic Finance Executive by Ethica Institute in Dubai, and one of only a handful of Americans to hold the Certified Trade and Logistics Professional certification from Dubai Trade. He is also a member of the Board of Directors at C3 International in Manhattan, the host organization of the globally recognized C3 Summits on healthcare and commerce in the Middle East.

Mr. M. G. ("Moe") Abutaleb is a seasoned executive who has been involved in various segments of the telecommunications and aerospace industries since 1977. During these years, he has participated in the definition, development and implementation of a multitude of satellite and wireless communications technologies, products and services. In addition, he has held senior management positions with leaders in the satellite communications and aerospace industries.

Mr. Abutaleb co-founded Innovative Communications Technologies, Inc. (ICTI) in 1989. As president of ICTI, he managed the systematic and progressive growth of this initially self-financed start-up business, through the sale of that business to a publicly traded company in 1999. Mr. Abutaleb is also co-founder of UltiSat, Inc. and holds a MSEE degree (University of Maryland), with emphasis in communications and microelectronics.

Dr. John Duke Anthony is the Founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, and currently serves on the United States Department of State Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and its Subcommittee on Sanctions. In 2012, he chaired and was the core lecturer in the Council's 26th Annual 10-Week University Student Summer Internship Program's Academic Seminar on Arabia and the Gulf. For the past 38 years, he has been a consultant and regular lecturer on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf for the Departments of Defense and State. He is former Chair, Near East and North Africa Program, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State as well as former Chair of the Department's Advanced Arabian Peninsula Studies Seminar. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1986, Dr. Anthony has been a frequent participant in its study groups on issues relating to the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf regions and the broader Arab and Islamic world. More recently, Dr. Anthony was elected to the Board of Advisors of the Yemen College for Middle Eastern Studies. For the Fall 2012 semester, in addition to fulfilling his duties as Council President and CEO and Adviser to the Department of State, he was appointed Dean's Chair in International Studies and Political Science at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, where he taught the Institute's first-ever course on "Politics of the Arabian Peninsula" to First (Senior) and Second (Junior) classmen.

On June 21, 2000, on the occasion of his first official visit to the United States, H.M King Muhammad VI of Morocco knighted Dr. Anthony, bestowing upon him the Medal of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite, the nation of Morocco's highest award for excellence. In addition to heading the National Council, consulting, lecturing, and serving as an Adjunct Faculty Member of the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Institute for Security Assistance Management (DISAM) since 1974, Dr. Anthony has been an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies since 2006. There, he developed a course for graduate students on "Politics of the Arabian Peninsula," the first such semester-long academic course to be offered at any American university. In 2007, he was Visiting Lecturer at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies. In 2008 he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo's HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin ‘Abdalaziz Al-Sa'ud Center for American Studies.

In 1983, Dr. Anthony received DISAM's Distinguished Achievement Award, one of three granted to American Middle East specialists in the Institute's history. In March 1989, the Kappa Alpha Order's National Executive bestowed upon him its Distinguished Public Service Award for Excellence "through a strenuous and useful Life of Service to others." In 1993, he received the U.S. Department of State's Distinguished Visiting Lecturer Award, one of three awarded over a span of 25 years in recognition of his preparation of American diplomatic and defense personnel assigned to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf states. In 1994, he received the Stevens Award for Outstanding Contributions to American-Arab Understanding. In May 2008, the Rotary Club of the Nation's Capital bestowed upon him its first-ever Local Giants Leadership Award.

Dr. Anthony is the only American to have been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (1969-1970). In 1971, he was cosponsored by the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Department of State as the sole American scholar to observe at firsthand the process by which the British ceased administering the defense and foreign relations for nine Arab states lining the coastal regions of eastern Arabia and the Gulf. His long experience in Yemen led to Dr. Anthony being asked to serve as an international observer in all four of Yemen's presidential and parliamentary elections.

Dr. Anthony is the only American to have been invited to each of the Gulf Cooperation Council's Ministerial and Heads of State Summits since the GCC's inception in 1981. (The GCC is comprised of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). Since 1986 and continuing until the present, Dr. Anthony has accompanied more than 200 Members of Congress, their chiefs of staff, defense and foreign affairs advisers, and legislative and communications directors on fact-finding missions to the Arab world. From 1996 until the present, he has also served as the principal scholar-escort for delegations to various GCC countries, Egypt, and Yemen comprised of 132 officers assigned to the staff of the Commander, U.S. Central Command, including Generals J.H. Binford Peay III, Anthony C. Zinni, Tommy Franks, John P. Abizaid, David Petraeus, James Mattis, and Admiral William Fallon.

Dr. Anthony is the author of three books, the editor of a fourth, and has published more than 175 articles and essays, and five monographs dealing with America's interests and involvement in the Arab countries and the Islamic world. His best-known works are Arab States of the Lower Gulf: People, Politics, Petroleum; The Middle East: Oil, Politics, and Development (editor and co-author) and, together with J. E. Peterson, Historical and Cultural Dictionary of the Sultanate of Oman and the Emirates of Eastern Arabia. Among his more recent publications are The United Arab Emirates: Dynamics of State Formation, Abu Dhabi, UAE: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), 2002; "The Future Significance of the Gulf Cooperation Council," in Global Strategic Developments: A Futuristic Vision, Abu Dhabi, UAE: ECSSR, 2012; "The Intervention in Bahrain through the Lenses of its Supporters" and "Challenges Facing NATO in Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq," all four published by ECSSR in the Summer and Fall of 2011; "War with Iran: Regional Reactions and Requirements," published by Middle East Policy and the National Council on US-Arab Relations, 2008; "Strategic Dynamics of Iran-GCC Relations," in Jean-François Seznec and Mimi Kirk, eds., Industrialization in the Gulf: A Socioeconomic Revolution, New York: Routledge, 2011; and "Measuring the Iraq War 'Accomplishments' Through the Lens of Its Authors: A Preliminary Assessment": a revised and edited version of an address presented to the Axis for Peace conference held in Brussels by Voltaire Network, 2005, published by the National Council.

In addition to being the founder and chief facilitator and moderator of the Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference, now in its 21st year, Dr. Anthony has been a founder, board member, and Secretary of the U.S.-GCC Corporate Cooperation Committee; founding President of the Middle East Educational Trust; co-founder of the Commission on Israeli-Palestinian Peace; founding President of the Society for Gulf Arab Studies; co-founder and board member of the National Commission to Commemorate the 14th Centennial of Islam; and founder and former chairman of the U.S.-Morocco Affairs Council. In 2006 he was elected Vice-President and member of the Board of Directors of the International Foreign Policy Association in Washington, D.C.

After completion of his U.S. Army active duty military service, the Commonwealth of Virginia granted Dr. Anthony a four-year State Cadetship Award which allowed him to enroll at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where he received his Bachelor's Degree in History. At VMI, he was elected president of his class all four years in addition to serving as president of the Corps of Cadets' Government General and Executive Committees during his First Class Year. He later earned a Master of Science Degree in Foreign Service (With Distinction) from the Edmund A. Walsh Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where, in addition to holding one of three University Scholar Awards, he was inducted into the National Political Science Honor Society. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and Middle East Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., where he held a National Defense in Foreign Language Scholarship for Arabic, was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, and was appointed in 1973 to SAIS' full-time faculty while still a student. For nearly a decade, Dr. Anthony taught courses on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf States at SAIS. He has been a Visiting and Adjunct Professor at the Defense Intelligence College, the Woodrow Wilson School of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, the Universities of Pennsylvania and Texas, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and a regular lecturer at the National War College.

Dr. Anthony passed his proficiency exam in French at the Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1966. He passed his proficiency exam in Arabic at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1969 following study there as well as at Princeton University and the American University in Cairo's Center for Arabic Study Abroad.

Dr. Anthony is married to Cynthia Burns McDonald, Director of the Washington, D.C. Office of the American University in Cairo, and has twin sons.

Ms. Laura Lombard is the founding President and Executive Director of the Middle East & North Africa Consultants Association (MENACA). MENACA is a professional trade association of highly experienced experts doing business in the MENA region. Members range from individual consultants specializing in a specific country or sector to medium sized consulting firms with a strong MENA focus. The organization's mission is to be the premier organization facilitating cooperation and collaboration between professionals doing business in the Middle East and North Africa and supporting business development and operational efforts of our members, leading to increased business opportunities, long-term viability, and profitability.

Ms. Lombard began her regional specialty while working for the National Council on US-Arab Relations (NCUSAR), focusing her work on North Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. After graduating from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with a regional specialty in the MENA region, she worked at The Cohen Group (TCG), a DC-based consulting firm founded by former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. At TCG, she regularly engaged in research projects, due diligence analysis, business development activities for clients in various sectors and focused on the Middle East, Latin America, and China. In addition, she had the unique opportunity to handle the firm's media portfolio.

After leaving TCG, she successfully developed her own independent consulting practice focused on providing strategic advice and insight to her clients on commercial opportunities in the MENA region. In particular, she has developed an expertise in the areas of renewable energy, infrastructure development, defense, and education. In addition to her Master's Degree from Johns Hopkins SAIS, Ms. Lombard has a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from the University of Kansas. She has travelled to Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey, UAE & Qatar.

Mr. Hampton Dowling is the Managing Partner of his own international professional services firm, the HCB Group LLC, providing executive management and advisory services to the global private and public sector. Throughout the GCC and North Africa, Mr. Dowling has managed programs and facilitated strategic partnerships, alliances and complex business pursuits. He brings relevant experience, industry reputation and expedient upside results to many of the near term strategic challenges discussed at the C3 Summit.

Mr. Dowling served as a career naval officer before retiring in the rank of Commander. Distinguished assignments included Special Assistant to the Vice President; and as a Senior Program Manager at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency leading tier one analytic, R&D and technology-applied programs, the results of which had direct, Executive Branch bearing on Service-level policies, appropriations, and new relations with GCC nations and NGOs. In the private sector, Mr. Dowling has led double-digit profitability increases managing $60M+ P&L lines of business, achieved an 80% win rate in excess of $5B for new company-wide business, and provided strategic advisory services to the foreign public sector to increase public revenues and stabilize governance. He has reversed troubled organizations in cost overrun positions while improving enterprise-scale performance worldwide.

As a homeland security account manager for the Pacific Region at SAIC, Mr. Dowling led a then first-ever consortium of business units introducing edge technologies and public-private high impact strategies to mitigate serious post-911 vulnerabilities facing US Territories and partner nations. As a senior PM at Lockheed Martin, he led distributed organizations delivering maritime security, coastal surveillance, offshore energy security and logistics management capabilities to clients across the US, SE Asia, LatAm, EU, WAfrica and the GCC. As a private sector VP, Mr. Dowling facilitated PPPs in Croatia, the Americas and SE Asia to resource and manage compliant trade, commerce and energy security/surveillance capabilities in a manner that increased public revenues. For the US Government, Mr. Dowling was invited to lead a comprehensive assessment of US inter-agency counter-illicit trafficking and cyber-threat activities in Central & South America; the findings and recommendations of which shaped much of today's DoD irregular warfare programs.

In 2012-2014, as Senior Executive Director, Sabre-i3 Ltd LLC, Mr. Dowling established and managed a partnership with supporting consortium of twenty int'l companies to provide a comprehensive $4B+ contracted scope of homeland and energy security, technical training and executive advisory capabilities in North Africa and GCC. Today, Mr. Dowling represents, advises diverse business interests in the UAE, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Mr. Dowling's experience extends from mature countries to fragile states with credentials further codified from testimony before congressional sub-committees, as a frequent speaker at int'l forums, and featured contributor to trade publications. He serves as an editorial director and board member to int'l organizations, holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California at Los Angeles, an MBA from Golden Gate University, and is a certified Project Management Professional in both private industry and from the US Department of Defense.

Dr. Muhammad Chaudry a career food technologist received his academic education in Pakistan, Lebanon and the United States with a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

For 15 years he worked in the food industry at various technical and management positions, responsible for total quality, quality assurance, human resources and employee training. For the past 30 years, Dr. Chaudry has been managing halal certification programs for the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA). Under his administration, halal certification by IFANCA has expanded to over 4000 production sites in 56 countries. Halal certified products include meat and poultry, seafood, food products, food ingredients and chemicals, nutritional products and supplements, cosmetics, personal care products, household products, vaccines, food processing chemicals, sanitation chemicals and packaging materials.

He is a member of the Institute of Food Technologists and expert consultant to the World Organization for Animal Health. He has written several articles and papers in technical journals as well as co-authored a book about Halal Food Production published by CRC PRESS. He was an international delegate for food safety workshops conducted in India, under the sponsorship of the United Nations International Trade Center and the American Spice Trade Association.

Dr. Chaudry is experienced in the management of not-for-profit organizations and industrial corporations in a cross-functional environment.

Mr. Paul Doherty is a Registered Architect (AIA) and one of the global Industry’s most sought after thought leaders, strategists and integrators of Smart City solutions. He is currently the President and CEO of the digit group, inc., a Smart Cities Master Architect, Builder and City Management solution provider headquartered in Silicon Valley. the digit group is currently working on innovative Smart City solutions in the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, India, China, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.

A Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, Mr. Doherty is an author, educator, analyst, consultant and project manager to Fortune 500 organizations, global government agencies, prominent institutions and the most prestigious architectural, engineering and construction firms in the world. His past successful ventures include Revit Technologies (Sold to Autodesk 2002), Buzzsaw (Sold to Autodesk 2001) and TRIRIGA (Sold to IBM 2011). He is a prominent and highly rated speaker at numerous industry events around the world each year and has been appointed as a guest lecturer at numerous universities around the world.

A former candidate to be the United States Architect of the Capitol, Mr. Doherty is and has been on the Board of Directors and Advisors of numerous organizations, including the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) and holds both European Community and United States Citizenship. Widely quoted in the media such as The Wall Street Journal; Business Week; ABC News; CBS Marketwatch; The Los Angeles Times; and USA Today. Mr. Doherty is also a regularly featured writer for Information Week; DesignIntelligence; Facility Management Journal; Design Build Magazine. Additionally, he is a contributing author to multiple sections of the AIA Handbook of Professional Practice; the Interior Design Handbook of Practice; BOMI’s Technologies for Facility Management; Residential Graphic Standards (John Wiley & Sons) and author of 2 books, the critically acclaimed, "Cyberplaces - The Internet Guide for Architects, Engineers and Contractors" and "Cyberplaces 2.0 - The Internet Guide for Architects, Engineers & Facility Managers", both published by R.S. Means.

After completing a benchmarked Whitepaper on Smart Cities for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), Mr. Doherty is currently writing a series of Smart City Whitepapers for McGraw-Hill Financial (Standard & Poors) that will be continuously published through 2017. In addition to leading the digit group, Mr. Doherty is a co-founder of the critically acclaimed AEC Hackathon that launched at Facebook Headquarters in Silicon Valley in November 2013 and continues its community building of innovation around the world today.

Mr. Mohammad Adil "Mak" Khan-Qasmi is an expert on South Asian and Middle Eastern human, cultural, social, trade & commerce and security matters. He is an international banker by trade and the Founder of the Pakistan Strategy Forum. He is also the Founder of Crown Consultants, Inc. USA and of US Halal Association, Inc,.USA and co-founder of UK Halal Association London - England.

Mr. Khan-Qasmi belons to many corporate boards and is also a Board member and Executive Director for International Relations for Aziz Group Holding; Madinah Al-Munewerah Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He is also Director of International Relations at SOLEX College - Chicago, Illinois and is the Illinois Director and Board Member of the House of Charity, Houston Texas - USA. He is also a long-standing member of many prestigious organizations, including the C3; National Strategy Forum; World Engagement Institute; the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America; and, the Halal Food Council of Europe.

Mr Khan-Qasmi is an advisor to a number of governmental and civil-society organizations, as well as a developer of Non-Governmental Organizations through which he not only helps formulate policy guidance, but also assists in the development of sustainable institutional governance capacity - building projects.

His banking credentials include:

• NATIONAL BANK OF PAKISTAN, Chicago, IL
• 1st National Bank of Chicago - Bank1 - JP MORGAN Chase, (Chicago, IL)
• TCF Bank & Financial Insurance Agency
• Bank of America (Karachi Pakistan – EMEA)

Mr. Khan-Qasmi is also a writer, speaker and analyst. He has appeared on numerous international media events and has served as a mediator for various inter-political, inter-faith and inter-ethnic engagements.

Mr. Khush Choksy is vice president for Turkey, Middle East, and North Africa Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he leads the activities of the department in developing and implementing policies and programs to promote U.S. trade and investment with markets in the region. Choksy manages a team of program and policy experts focused on working closely with Chamber member companies and business and government leaders to advance and broaden commercial relationships between the United States and the region. In addition, he serves as executive director of the U.S.-Egypt Business Council and the U.S.-Bahrain Business Council. He is actively involved in the Chamber’s efforts to lead a Middle East Commercial Dialogue to foster intra-regional trade and investment.

Before joining the Chamber, Choksy was a director at Chemonics International where he led teams in developing economic ties between the United States and the Middle East. He lived and worked in Jordan for seven years, establishing relations with private- and public-sector leaders at a critical time in the U.S.-Middle East relationship on behalf of several USAID programs. He also worked in India, overseeing U.S. government and World Bank-funded projects that helped liberalize the capital markets and financial sectors.

His thought leadership includes presentations at international forums on business reform and U.S. trade and financial sector investment in emerging markets.

Choksy received his M.B.A. in strategic management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his B.A. magna cum laude from Hamilton College. He lives with his wife and daughter in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Mr. Steve Lutes is Director of Middle East and North Africa Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is specifically responsible for managing the U.S.-Iraq Business Initiative and serves as its director. In this capacity, Mr. Lutes is responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs that promote U.S. business opportunities and investment in Iraq. He works closely with Chamber member companies and business and government leaders to advance and broaden commercial relationships between the United States and Iraq.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Lutes was the director of the Chamber's Corporate Leadership Advisory Council. He was responsible for overseeing the council which serves as a platform for midmarket business executives to share input on a range of policy issues and shape the Chamber's probusiness agenda. Mr. Lutes also successfully led the Government Withholding Relief Coalition to repeal the onerous 3% withholding tax.

Mr. Lutes came to the Chamber from the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration (ITA) where he was a senior legislative affairs specialist in the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. He focused on educating members of Congress on the benefits of trade and foreign direct investment and on advancing the Administration's trade agenda on Capitol Hill, including securing passage of the United StatesDominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Mr. Lutes also served as the congressional liaison to the President's Export Council and the Manufacturing Council for the Department. Previously, Mr. Lutes worked for the Republican Party in Columbus, Ohio, where he worked in conjunction with the Bush-Cheney reelection effort in Ohio through 2004, successfully directing political and grassroots strategy in central Ohio and helping turnout the largest county vote for former President George W. Bush in Ohio.

Earlier in his career, he worked on Capitol Hill for both Representative Ed Pease (R-IN) and Representative Brian Kerns (R-IN). He held a variety of positions, including press secretary, legislative director, and chief of staff. Mr. Lutes earned his bachelor's degree in marketing from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Public and International Affairs from Virginia Tech.

Mr. Ken Dorph is a leading global expert in financial institution and financial system strengthening. Mr. Dorph began his career in Citibank and Smith Barney, and has worked with the IFC / World Bank Group. For the past twenty years, Mr. Dorph has been consulting in financial institutions worldwide, first with Booz Allen & Hamilton and more recently with his own firm, Sag Harbor Consulting. He has worked with a broad range of financial institutions developing strategy and designing and implementing risk management systems.

Mr. Dorph has a deep experience reviewing and strengthening banks and financial systems worldwide. He led the assessment of the Mexican banks' net worth after the peso collapse, and was also led a similar review in Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis. Mr. Dorph has worked as an advisor on strategy and risk management to the World Bank, the IMF, and a wide range of central banks and supervisors in Latin America (Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil), Africa (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa), Asia (Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan), and the Middle East (Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE, and Yemen).

Mr. Dorph has particular expertise in the Middle East and is a popular speaker on Middle Eastern topics. He has been invited to lecture at the University of California at Berkeley, the Wharton School, the University of Michigan, the New School, and Georgetown University. He has delivered training at banks and central banks around the world. Since September 11th 2001, Mr. Dorph has been teaching an acclaimed course "Seven Keys to Understanding the Arab Middle East" that he developed, at high schools, colleges, and to the public in New York State.

Mr. Dorph has special experience in Islamic finance and has published articles on Islamic law and banking. Since 1985, when he launched the GCC's first shari'ah compliant equity portfolio, he has advised many of the region's banks and central banks and has developed strategy, written feasibility studies, and drafted governance and risk policies for several leading Islamic banks and Islamic investment companies. He advises the World Bank on Islamic finance has been invited to draft the World Bank's corporate governance guidelines for Islamic financial institutions.

Mr. Dorph has a Masters of Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, including a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Damascus, and a Masters of Business Administration from the Wharton School. In addition to studying in Damascus, Mr. Dorph studied at Mohammed V University in Rabat and spent three years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia. He is fluent in Arabic (standard and several dialects), Spanish, and French.

Mr. Robert E. Michael, a globally recognized expert on Islamic Finance, is the Managing Member of Robert E. Michael & Associates PLLC, a law firm that engages in general corporate and commercial litigation representations, with a primary focus on cross-border workouts and bankruptcies, representing offshore corporate clients either with claims against, or an interest in investing in, U.S. entities in financial difficulty. He is a frequent lecturer on both the basic tenets of Islamic law and finance and the divisions among the Sunni, the Shi'a and the Salafists.

Mr. Michael is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Pace University Law School, teaching "Law and Finance" to international L.L.M. candidates, primarily from Saudi Arabia, and provides annual guest lectures on Islamic Finance and International Business Transactions to the cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has appeared frequently in the Saudi Arabian business press, and is the co-author of "Iflas and Chapter 11 - Classical Islamic Law and Modern Bankruptcy," in The International Lawyer. In 2010, Mr. Michael had the unique opportunity to be the first non-diplomat invited to address the Ambassadors of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (then the Organization of the Islamic Conference) at the United Nations. His speech was entitled Islamic Finance in Relation to Capitalism and Socialism.

Mr. Michael, a graduate of Brown University and New York University School of Law; is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation; and, has headed a Workout/Restructure Department in a commercial bank (Manufacturers Hanover); an investment bank (Paribas Corporation); and a law firm (Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives). He was also a partner of Morrison & Foerster, based in New York City. Besides being appointed the inaugural Chair of the new Committee on Middle Eastern and North African Affairs of the New York City Bar Association, he is a Member of its Council on International Affairs and a former Chair of its Committee on Foreign and Comparative Law.

Mr. Michael is also the Chairman of the Islamic Law Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association, the oldest international law society in the world; as well as a member of the Arab Bankers Association of North America.

Mr. John Desrocher took up his current position in September 2014. During the previous year he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He also served in Baghdad from 2009-2010 as Minister Counselor for Economic Coordination, responsible for U.S.-Iraq economic policy issues. In the interim, he served in the Department of State as the Director of the Office of Iraq Affairs and briefly as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Maghreb Affairs. From 2006-2009 he served as the U.S. Consul General in Auckland.

He has extensive experience in international trade and in Middle East issues. Immediately prior to his assignment to Auckland he served as Counselor for Economic and Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. He participated in Palestinian-Israeli economic negotiations while serving at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem in the late 1990s and served as State Department desk officer for Iraq in the mid-1990s. While detailed to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, he led portions of free trade negotiations with Chile and Singapore.

He also served in the U.S. Embassies in Monrovia and Bonn as well as in the State Department Operations Center and Office of European Union Affairs. Mr. Desrocher, a graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, is a multiple recipient of the State Department's Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards.

Mr. Karim Babay founded Intrinsic Value Investment Partners (IVIP) in 2009 as a hedge fund platform. IVIP is a global investment management firm with a value oriented approach. Prior to IVIP, Mr. Babay was a Partner at Foxhill Capital Partners LLC, a distressed/event driven hedge fund founded in 2005. Mr. Babay served on Foxhill's investment committee. Prior to Foxhill, Mr. Babay spent 6 years at Lehman Brothers in various capacities including investment banking and proprietary trading.

Mr. Babay was a member of Lehman's global mergers and acquisitions group from 2001 to 2003 where he completed several transactions. In 2003, Mr. Babay joined Lehman's proprietary trading desk as a senior investment analyst responsible for generating and executing trading ideas in both the debt and equity markets.

Prior to Lehman Brothers, Mr. Babay worked in various managerial positions in the textile and sanitary ware industries. Mr. Babay holds a MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor of science from IHEC Institute. Mr. Babay also is on the board of directors of the Arab Bankers Association of North America. Mr. Babay is fluent in English, French and Arabic.

Mr. Paul C. Homsy has more than 30 years of experience in the Middle East (in the Arabian Gulf countries in particular) and additional experience in cross-border transactions. Mr. Homsy practiced law in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for five years as the managing partner of Sidley & Austin's former office there. He has advised on billions of dollars of transactions involving acquisitions, joint ventures, technology transfer agreements, and conventional and Sharia compliant financings. He also has a wealth of practical business experience and relationships among the sovereign wealth funds, ultra high net worth investors, banks, and investment companies of the Arabian Gulf to assist clients in developing and growing their businesses in that region. Mr. Homsy's areas of concentration include:

• Advising on the laws and regulations of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the wider Middle East region.
• Cross border joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, technology transfer agreements, franchising, and distribution and sales representation agreements.
• Offshore and onshore investment funds, including private equity, real estate, and other alternative asset classes.
• Islamic banking, including Sharia compliant investment funds, trade finance, equipment leasing, inventory financing, and off balance sheet financings.
• U.S. foreign trade regulations, including the U.S. Anti-boycott Regulations, and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Client Profiles

• Conventional and Islamic banks
• Ultra high net worth investors and family offices
• Private equity, real estate, and hedge funds
• Fortune 500 and smaller companies involved in consumer products, advertising, media, manufacturing, defense, energy, healthcare, and infrastructure

Professional Activities

• Co-organizer, C3 U.S. Arab Business Summit, September, 2012, President Bill Clinton as keynote speaker
• Board of Directors, Arab Bankers Association of North America (2000 to 2006) and Member Executive Committee (2004 to 2006)
• Board of Advisors, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East, (1994 to 1998)
• Technical Advisory Committee, Wharton Export Network, Wharton Graduate School Business Administration, University of Pennsylvania (1990 to 1995)
• Committee Chairman (1983 to 1984), Vice Chairman (1982 to 1983, and 2000 to 2002), Middle East Law Committee, International Section, American Bar Association
• Member, New York District Export Council of U.S. Department of Commerce (1990 to 2000)

Representative Media Appearances and Lectures

• Middle East Commentator on CNBC, Bloomberg Television, Reuters TV News Service
• Quoted on the Middle East in the Financial Times, The Economist, Journal of Commerce, Gulf News, and Bermuda Royal Gazette
• Speaker on Islamic Finance at C3 U.S. Arab Business Summit, 2012 and 2013
• Keynote Speaker at the Leaders in Islamic Finance Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, presided over by Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, 2008
• Guest lecturer at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Islamic Finance
• Speaker at various conferences on Middle East Law and Islamic Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, and Harvard University

Representative Engagements

• Represented leading global advertising company in acquisition of and joint venture with the largest privately-owned advertising company in the Middle East, involving subsidiaries in 10 different Arab countries in the Arabian Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa
• Represented leading global consumer products company in establishing a joint venture for the manufacture of personal care products in Saudi Arabia and in obtaining necessary approvals from the Saudi Foreign Capital Investment Committee and Ministry of Commerce
• Represented the largest Islamic bank in the world on about $3 billion of Sharia compliant financings as well as on litigation relating to $120 million of claims against Enron
• Represented leading U.S. bank in the establishment of a Sharia compliant equipment leasing fund
• Represented Kuwaiti bank in a Sharia compliant U.S. real estate fund
• Represented leading Arab bank in various Sharia compliant off balance sheet inventory financings
• Represented Swiss private bank in the establishment of a joint venture private equity fund with leading UAE asset manager
• Represented U.S. private equity fund manager in the establishment of the first Sharia compliant private equity fund
• Represented leading global healthcare company on various matters relating to the U.S. anti-boycott regulations and various distribution and agency matters including a major dispute with its former Saudi distributor
• Represented leading U.S. chemicals company in the reorganization of their Saudi joint venture
• Represented and acted as Arabian Gulf and Levant outside general counsel for leading global soft drink company involving such matters as the establishment of their technical advisory branch in Saudi Arabia, and various franchise matters throughout the Arabian Gulf and the Levant
• Represented Kuwait investment company in the acquisition of a leading U.S. project management company and the establishment of a Middle East joint venture between them
• Represented Kuwait investment company in the establishment of a $250 million Sharia compliant hotel and resort fund
• Represented leading UAE bank on a series of complex litigation matters and U.S. Government investigation relating to the BCCI financial scandal
• Represented U.S. private equity firm in the establishment of a conventional and Sharia compliant international trade finance fund
• Represented public broadcasting company of Japan on various corporate and transactional matters

Publications

• "Islamic Private Equity," Islamic Wealth Management, Euromoney, 2009
• "Islamic Private Equity Opportunities and Challenges," Islamica Magazine, Spring 2009
• "Distribution and Agency Agreements, Counseling Emerging Companies in Going International," ABA, Section of International Law and Practice, 1991
• "Saudi Arabian Joint Venture and Agency Law," Transnational Joint Ventures, Business Laws, Inc., 1989
• "Agency Law in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa," Northwestern University Journal of International Law and Business, Summer 1983, reprinted in The International Law Encyclopedia, University of Virginia School of Law
• "Legal Aspects of Doing Business in Saudi Arabia," International Lawyer, Winter 1982

Admissions

• New York, 1976
• Southern District of New York, 1977

Education

• The Dickinson School of Law (Doctor of Law), 1975
• University of Pennsylvania (B.A. in History), 1972
• Languages: Arabic (conversational), Spanish (fluent)

Mr. George Likourezos is a patent attorney and partner at the intellectual property law firm of Carter, DeLuca, Farrell & Schmidt, LLP. He is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the Courts of the State of New York and registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Mr. Likourezos has been published in several legal journals, including the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society (JPTOS). He focuses his legal practice in protecting innovations in the following fields of technology: cybersecurity, digital electronics and computer architecture, communication systems, electrical circuits and components, networks and home automation, and related electromechanical arts. He is a member of the New York Intellectual Property Law Association and on the Boards of the Long Island Capital Alliance and ADDAPT. He also serves on the Boards of several technology companies.

Mr. Jason B. Scher received a B.S., Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Mathematics and a B.A., German Cultural Studies with a Minor in International Studies, from Binghamton University (2003); a J.D., Massachusetts School of Law with a concentration in Intellectual Property (2007). Admitted to the Courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (2007)and registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (2006). He was also an International Filing Coordinator at Hamilton, Brook, Smith & Reynolds, P.C. (2007-2008) and a Patent Paralegal at Novartis (2007); an IP Paralegal at O’Connell Law Office (2005-2007); an IP Paralegal at Salzman & Levy (2002-2003); and an Engineer at Fusco Engineering (2003). He is a member of the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association. Experienced in patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and related matters, he practices in the technological fields which include mechanical, electromechanical, and medical arts with an emphasis on medical and surgical devices.

Mr. Fareed Osman is Chairman of the Antigravity Group, a holdings firm with interests in mining and minerals, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and cutting edge biomedical technologies. A chemical and biomedical systems engineer, he has been a consultant and strategic advisor to several Fortune 100 private firms as well as a subject matter expert to defense and national security firms. He has advised many global brands over his engineering career including UPS , General Electric, Toyota, BMW, and a host of biomedical and internet start-ups.

Mr. Osman is actively involved in project work for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency); Department of Homeland Security; the Intelligence Community; the aerospace industry including design and support of "hard" language translation programs for SOCOM/Special Operations forces serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has successfully led mergers and acquisitions of defense and national security firms with total post M&A values approaching $4 Billion.

For the past 13 years he has also been advising successive US administrations on US policy and economic strategy towards Afghanistan. With the total cost of the Afghan war at $900 Billion to date, and $300 Billion spent in 2012 thru 2014 alone, Mr. Osman has been articulating a strategy for post 2014 transition. He has been calling on Congress for reform of the Department of State and USAID's approach to international development through more efficient use of the annual budget of $50 Billion.

Mr. Osman's involvement in Afghanistan spans a broad spectrum of sectors from defense; FMS (foreign military sales); international development; and national security including human intelligence, telecommunications and cyber-security to work on state building, anti-corruption and accountability systems. He is a recognized expert on governance, international justice systems and has presented prescriptions for strengthening rule of law to the World Justice Project, United Nations and US Congress.

Born in Afghanistan and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii since age 9, Mr. Osman has been voted as one of the Top 40/Under 40 "Next-Gen Global Asian Leaders." He is the founder of the Sharbat Gula Justice Center, which focuses on women's rights in Afghanistan and provides legal advocacy for victims of gender apartheid in addition to building schools for young girls.

Mr. Steve Curren is Acting Director of the Division of Resilience and Infrastructure Coordination in the Office Emergency Management under the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). His work at HHS focuses on a wide range of critical infrastructure matters affecting the Healthcare and Public Health Sector, including physical security, cybersecurity, supply chain continuity, business continuity, pandemic preparedness, extreme weather preparedness, and other areas of risk management. Prior to joining HHS in 2008, Steve worked five years at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), where he served as Senior Director for Public Health Preparedness. In this capacity he directed a program to develop and disseminate model policies and practices to advance public health preparedness for state and territorial public health agencies.

Steve began his career as an industry consultant on public health and regulatory policy issues, with a focus on U.S. and European regulatory affairs. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Wake Forest University and Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) degree from Georgetown University with Honors in International Business Diplomacy. He has completed executive crisis leadership training through Harvard University’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and the Foreign Service Institute’s National Security Executive Leadership Seminar.

Mr. Luke Ritter is Executive Vice President at Ridge Global, the strategic consulting firm founded by Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security and 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania. As member of the senior management team, Mr. Ritter leads the Transportation Security and Risk Management practice areas. His expertise is focused on global trade and transportation operations, transportation security, and enterprise risk management.

Mr. Ritter is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Surface Warfare Officer. He holds an M.B.A from Old Dominion University, and is a board certified Transportation and Logistics Professional (American Society of Transportation and Logistics). Mr. Ritter has spoken at more than thirty five industry and trade events in the last five years, including keynote addresses at The American Association of Port Authorities Annual Security Conference, and the Logistics Management Magazine Global Supply Chain Conference. He is the co-author of Securing Global Transportation Networks (McGraw Hill), and has recently been published or quoted in: Journal of Commerce, Security Management, Directors Monthly, and Cargo Security International.

Mr. Ritter has previous executive experience in business development for a major U.S. defense contractor. Prior to joining Ridge Global, he was the founder and CEO of Trident Global Partners. Mr. Ritter currently serves on the Advisory Boards of: iJET International, Inc.; Decision Sciences International Corporation: International Maritime Security Corporation; and, HALO Maritime Defense.

Dr. John P. Entelis is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department. He is also Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Fordham University. He received his B.A. degree in political science from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1964, Summer Certificates in Arabic Language Study at the American University in Cairo [Egypt](1965), Harvard University (1966), and Princeton University (1967) under NDEA National Defense Foreign Language Fellowships, an M.A. from New York University in 1967, and a Ph.D. in political science from New York University in 1970.

Since 1970 he has been on the faculty of the political science department at Fordham University where he was promoted to the rank of full professor in 1979 and where he has served as Chairman (1981-1984), Assistant Chairman (1972-1974), Director of the Graduate Program in International Political Economy and Development (1979-1981), and Director of the Middle East Studies Program (1980 to present).

He has been awarded several Fulbright awards including a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship to conduct research in Lebanon (1968-1969), a Senior Fulbright Professorship at the University of Algiers in 1977-1978 and one at the University of Tunis in 1985, and a Fulbright Regional Research Award to Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in 1989. Dr. Entelis has also directed three National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes and seminars. Professor Entelis has lectured widely both in the United States and abroad to university, government, business, and community groups under the sponsorship of private, academic, and governmental institutions.

Dr. Entelis is the author or co-author of numerous scholarly publications on the comparative and international politics of the Middle East and North Africa including: Pluralism and Party Transformation in Lebanon (1974) Comparative Politics of North Africa (1980, 1984), The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa (1980, 1986, 1995, 2002, 2006, 2011), Political Elites in Arab North Africa (1982), Algeria: The Revolution Institutionalized (1986), Culture and Counterculture in Moroccan Politics (1989,1996), State and Society in Algeria (1992), and Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa (1997). He has also written scores of book chapters, articles and book reviews that have appeared in the leading scholarly journals in the fields of political science, international relations, Middle Eastern affairs, and North African studies.

He has also published analytic pieces in The New York Times and Le Monde Diplomatique, among many others. Much of his extensive overseas research experience has been presented at numerous professional conferences in the US and abroad. His research has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Programs, the Ford Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), among others.

Dr. Entelis is editor-in-chief of the Journal of North African Studies and Secretary of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), editor of Westview's series on "State, Culture, and Society in Arab North Africa," and is a member or former member of several prestigious bodies including Comité de Rédaction of Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, Board of Directors of the Tangier American Legation Museum Society (TALMS), Board of Directors of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, Academic Associate of the Atlantic Council of the United States, Board of Advisory Editors of Middle East Affairs Journal, Associate Editor of Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, and an invited participant of several discussion groups of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Lehrman Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and others.

He consults frequently for private and public institutions including the U.S. Department of State, DIA, IFES, the Foreign Service Institute, the Public Broadcasting System, ABC Network News, CBS Network News, MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, Charlie Rose Show, CNN International,The New York Times and numerous universities and colleges in the United States and abroad.

Mr. David Batsford is a seasoned international executive and a successful entrepreneur. He has served in the capacities of investor, CEO, Board Director and Senior Partner for over 30 years. For the past nine years, Mr. Batsford has served as the CEO and Chairman of SmartPoints Technology Incorporated.

SmartPoints technology™ is a patented Asset Governance Protocol, which offers a novel new way for designing and building applications software. Intelligent SmartPoints allow for business rules and security to be incorporated at the data element level of the assets they govern and protect: including identities, documents, data... anything that can be digitally represented. SmartPoints allow for workflow changes to be implemented and enforced in real-time, yielding complete control over policies, permissions and access. SmartPoints technology makes it possible to have total control and unlimited security over anything digital.

Including SmartPoints Technology, Mr. Batsford has founded and successfully grown three companies. He has consulted to leading Fortune corporations on various aspects of corporate strategy and value creation.

From Northeastern University, Mr. Batsford earned aBSBA with dual majors –Management and Finance, graduating Magna Cum Laude. He also earned a MBA from Columbia Business School –finance focused, as well as a MBA from London Business School –International Management and Corporate Turnarounds focused. He is a graduate of the Program on Negotiations (PON) at the Harvard Law School Negotiation Institute. He is also a National Association of Corporate Directors Fellow (NACD) and is a member of the Arab Bankers Association of North America (ABANA).

Mr. John Oldfield leads the efforts of WASH Advocates to increase awareness of the global WASH challenge and solutions, and to increase the amount and effectiveness of resources devoted to those solutions throughout the developing world. He believes strongly that the global safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene challenge is more solvable than it is difficult. Mr. Oldfield's previous experience with safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) comes from founding and implementing two nonprofits in the sector and his tenure as Executive Vice President with Water Advocates. An advocacy group in Washington, DC, Water Advocates is dedicated to increasing financial and political support for worldwide access to safe, affordable and sustainable supplies of drinking water and adequate sanitation.

Prior to Water Advocates. Mr. Oldfield was a Vice President at a New York private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts and corporate divestitures. He has also been with The Conference Board, a New York-based economic research firm that produces the well-known Leading Economic Indicators and Consumer Confidence Index. While there, he launched and managed two innovative online services, including a corporate training business.

Prior to The Conference Board, Mr. Oldfield was with the National Academy of Sciences, where he researched science, technology, and economic policy issues. He also has extensive international management experience with USAID and U.S. Department of State contracts, including training programs for election officials, civil society, and foreign media, as well as civil/military communication projects in post-conflict countries.

Mr. Chuck Mitman is the Managing Partner at Rainmaker Worldwide, a firm whose global mission is to provide cost-effective, climate-friendly and sustainable water technology solutions. As Managing Partner, Mr. Mitman oversees efforts to deliver drinking water solutions to communities suffering from fresh water scarcity and to commercial, industrial, military sites where current sources of potable or purified water are comparatively expensive or not available.

Mr. Mitman has over 20 years of senior executive leadership experience in the energy and quality management industries. While co-founder and President of Prism eSolutions, Mr. Mitman was responsible for building relationships and delivering content that enabled clients to implement, manage and maintain quality, business continuity and security management systems. Prior to founding Prism eSolutions, Mr. Mitman served as vice president of the International Business Division of Simon & Schuster. Mr. Mitman is the editor of BCM China, the leading publication for business continuity in Asia, and is the author of the quality management, ISO 9000, and business continuity curriculum for the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants).

He has also testified as subject matter expert on issues pertaining to bio-terrorism, food defense and agro-terrorism at numerous Congressional hearings. Mr. Mitman is a strategic advisor to Valley Forge Financial Group and Blue Sky Capital and supports private equity and merger/acquisition transactions in the technology and manufacturing sectors.

Mr. Rosenberg currently is Associate Director of the Cyber Systems Group and Executive Director of the Center for Inherently Secure Processing at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge. Prior to Draper, Mr. Rosenberg was Technical Director at BAE Systems where he was PI or co-PI on several large DARPA cyber security programs including CRASH (Clean-slate Redesign of Adaptive Secure Hosts) and MRC (Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds).

He caught the entrepreneurial spirit and turned his works into a supercomputer startup in California called MasPar. Then he did a five-year stint at a large software company called Borland. Borland relocated Mr. Rosenberg to Boston where he has remained for 18 years. He has gone on to found eight additional startups. During this time he also wrote three technical books: How Debuggers Work; Securing Web Services; and, The Cloud at Your Service. He also wrote an inspirational memoir called Who Says I Can't that recounts how he used extreme sports to recover from a disability.

Mr. Jothy has a PhD in computer science (VLSI computer-aided design algorithms) from Duke University where he stayed on as professor for five years building space-flyable massively parallel single-instruction multiple-data architecture supercomputers.

Dr. Mark McGranaghan is Vice President of the Power Delivery and Utilization (PDU) Sector for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He leads the teams responsible for EPRI’s research involving technologies, systems, and practices for the power delivery system from the generator to the plug and for the devices and technologies that use the electricity.

Dr. McGranaghan has been with EPRI since 2003 and has had a strong influence on EPRI’s research in the areas of power quality, advanced distribution systems, and the smart grid. He has worked closely with government and industry research organizations, both in the United States and International. Prior to joining EPRI, he was with Electrotek Concepts (1998-2003) and McGraw-Edison/Cooper Power. He has BSEE and MSEE degrees from the University of Toledo and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. McGranaghan has taught seminars and workshops around the world and is very active in standards development and industry activities. He is an IEEE Fellow

Dr. Erfan Ibrahim is the Center Director for Cyber-Physical Systems Security & Resilience R&D at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden Colorado. Dr. Ibrahim works with the public and private sector to identify security requirements, evaluate cyber security standards, test cyber security controls and determine residual risk in smart networks in the electric sector, water and oil & gas. He serves as the chief liaison from NREL to the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) at the Department of Energy. He is also serving on the cyber security and resilience team within the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium for the DoE.

Dr. Ibrahim has had a 28 year career working in a variety of fields including plasma physics, nuclear fusion engineering, telecom, IT, network management, communications, smart grid and cybersecurity. He has worked for Lawrence Livermore National Lab, UCLA, Pacific Bell, Newbridge Networks, Jyra Research, Electric Power Research Institute, Scitor and Penn State University. He served as a consultant through his company, The Bit Bazaar LLC for over 10 years in the high tech, financial services, government and energy sectors. Dr. Ibrahim led the industry consensus building exercise in the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Roadmap project during 2009 and also led the National Electric Sector Cybersecurity Organization Resources (NESCOR) project from DoE during 2010-2011 while serving as a Technical Executive in the Intelligrid Program at EPRI.

Dr. Ibrahim has a BS Honors in Physics from Syracuse University, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas Austin and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California Berkeley.

Mr. Ransel Potter has been a guest speaker at financial events in the Arab region and the United States. His contacts throughout the Arab world and the United States are with the top global financial institutions; high net worth families; and, government representatives, including several Sovereign Wealth Funds. He is currently licensed with a Series 7, Series 66 and Series 3.

The founder and Managing Director of COPARA, he continues to build a rewarding career spanning three decades, and multiple industries, including many noteworthy achievements. His abilities to lead, strategize, develop business and maintain relationships have all contributed to his success.

Most recently, Mr. Potter founded C3 Summit LLC. The mission of C3 Summit, as noted on its website http://www.c3-summit.com is to ensure that both US and Arab businesses grow and prosper by providing unique and valuable commerce opportunities. By creating a global forum for both the US and the Arab world to explore private sector growth and employment generation, C3 Summit will encourage each region to open new opportunities on the commercial front to enhance the welfare of freer trade.

Prior to founding C3 Summit, Mr. Potter has been marketing financial instruments in the Arab region under the umbrella of Copara. He personally negotiated with Value Line the international distribution rights regarding both terms and conditions. In less than 11 months, Mr. Potter established several funds. One funded and managed by the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (the 50th strongest bank in the world). He also was successful in marketing a high yield fund for Thomson Reuters with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. The other, The National Investor, a top boutique investment banking house located in Dubai. He was also responsible for engaging with the Abu Dhabi Investment Company (Invest AD) an assignment to incorporate a quantitative ranking system, with a $30 million GCC/MENA fund, managed by Invest AD.

Morgan Stanley recognized the value of Mr. Potter's experience and relationships and, in 2007, they invited him to join the firm. Until December of 2010, Mr. Potter served as a Senior Partner on their Private Wealth Management team responsible for identifying viable business opportunities among high net worth clients, families, hedge funds and foundations. His introductions had been a cornerstone of the team's success producing more than $250 million of net new assets in 36 months. In 1992, Mr. Potter founded Kinloch Marketing and occupied the role of CEO until 2007. Kinloch designed and brought to market sales lead generation and management systems for the Insurance, Banking and Energy industries. Kinloch's success was a direct result of his leadership and a network he established with senior executives of Fortune 1000 companies.

In 1990, his previous achievements were recognized by Flair Communications and he was asked to run their NY office. He merged R.N. Potter Associates with Flair's New York office and built that regional office in to the largest of their five domestic offices, leaving in 1992 to establish Kinloch Marketing. He formed R.N. Potter Associates in 1984, a marketing and sales organization, which he headed until 1989. During that time, Mr. Potter personally initiated, negotiated and developed one of the largest independent contracts for advertising billboards with the Penn Central Corporation.

In 1980, Mr. Potter, together with a partner, started On Line Media, an innovative supermarket ad company. Within three years, they took On Line Media public, raising capital and watching the stock soar. Upon selling his shares of On Line Media in 1984, he formed R.N. Potter Associates. Mr. Potter, a graduate of Syracuse University, has six children and, with his wife, lives in East Hampton, NY.